"Well, I take back the promise, that's all."

"Don't you think you've punished him enough for this time, John?"
timidly asked his wife.

"No boy is ever punished enough until he is conquered," was the reply.
"And Edgar is far from that!"

Mrs. Allan, with her arm about the little culprit's shoulder went with
him to his room. How she wished that he would let her cuddle him in her
lap and sing to him and tell him stories and then hear him his prayers
at her knee and tuck him in bed as in the old days before he went to
boarding-school! Her heart ached for him, though she had no notion of
the bitterness, the rebellion, that were rankling in his. As she kissed
him goodnight she whispered,

"You shall have your swim, in the river, tomorrow, Eddie darling; I'll
see that you do."

"Don't you ask _him_ to let me do anything," he protested, passionately.
"I'm going without asking him. He disowned me for a son, I'll disown him
for a father!"

He loved her but he was glad when the door closed behind her so that he
could think it all out for himself in the dark--the dear dark that he
had always loved so well and that was now as balm to his bruised spirit.
The worst of it was that he could not disown John Allan as a father. He
had to confess to himself with renewed bitterness that he was indeed,
and by no fault of his own--a helpless dependent upon the charity of