“Were never married, sir,” said the old man promptly, as if he would relieve me from an embarrassing position. “I couldn’t help it.  And I’m no less the child of my Father in heaven for it.  For if He hadn’t made me, I couldn’t ha’ been their son, you know, sir.  So that He had more to do wi’ the makin’ o’ me than they had; though mayhap, if He had His way all out, I might ha’ been the son o’ somebody else.  But, now that things be so, I wouldn’t have liked that at all, sir; and bein’ once born so, I would not have e’er another couple of parents in all England, sir, though I ne’er knew one o’ them.  And I do love my mother.  And I’m so sorry for my father that I love him too, sir.  And if I could only get my boy Tom to think as I do, I would die like a psalm-tune on an organ, sir.”

“But it seems to me strange,” I said, “that your son should think so much of what is so far gone by.  Surely he would not want another father than you, now.  He is used to his position in life.  And there can be nothing cast up to him about his birth or descent.”

“That’s all very true, sir, and no doubt it would be as you say.  But there has been other things to keep his mind upon the old affair.  Indeed, sir, we have had the same misfortune all over again among the young people.  And I mustn’t say anything more about it; only my boy Tom has a sore heart.”

I knew at once to what he alluded; for I could not have been about in my parish all this time without learning that the strange handsome woman in the little shop was the daughter of Thomas Weir, and that she was neither wife nor widow.  And it now occurred to me for the first time that it was a likeness to her little boy that had affected me so pleasantly when I first saw Thomas, his grandfather.  The likeness to his great-grandfather, which I saw plainly enough, was what made the other fact clear to me.  And at the same moment I began to be haunted with a flickering sense of a third likeness which I could not in the least fix or identify.

“Perhaps,” I said, “he may find some good come out of that too.”

“Well, who knows, sir?”

“I think,” I said, “that if we do evil that good may come, the good we looked for will never come thereby.  But once evil is done, we may humbly look to Him who bringeth good out of evil, and wait.  Is your granddaughter Catherine in bad health?  She looks so delicate!”

“She always had an uncommon look.  But what she looks like now, I don’t know.  I hear no complaints; but she has never crossed this door since we got her set up in that shop.  She never conies near her father or her sister, though she lets them, leastways her sister, go and see her.  I’m afraid Tom has been rayther unmerciful, with her.  And if ever he put a bad name upon her in her hearing, I know, from what that lass used to be as a young one, that she wouldn’t be likely to forget it, and as little likely to get over it herself, or pass it over to another, even her own father.  I don’t believe they do more nor nod to one another when they meet in the village.  It’s well even if they do that much.  It’s my belief there’s some people made so hard that they never can forgive anythink.”