have spoken to me of such a one. Let your heart speak again, for his
sake--for the sake of the dead."

A gentler light suffused the boy's eyes, and he started. Catching
convulsively at his companion's sleeve, he said in an eager, boyish
whisper, "There was one, a wicked, desperate man, whom they all
feared--Flynn, who brought me from the mines. Yes, I thought that he
was my cousin's loyal friend--more than all the rest; and I told him
everything--all, that I never told the man I thought my cousin, or
anyone, or even you; and I think, I think, Father, I liked him best
of all. I thought since it was wrong," he continued, with a trembling
smile, "for I was foolishly fond even of the way the others feared him,
he that I feared not, and who was so kind to me. Yet he, too, left me
without a word, and when I would have followed him--" But the boy broke
down, and buried his face in his hands.

"No, no," said Father Sobriente, with eager persistence, "that was his
foolish pride to spare you the knowledge of your kinship with one so
feared, and part of the blind and mistaken penance he had laid upon
himself. For even at that moment of your boyish indignation, he never
was so fond of you as then. Yes, my poor boy, this man, to whom God led
your wandering feet at Deadman's Gulch; the man who brought you here,
and by some secret hold--I know not what--on Don Juan's past, persuaded
him to assume to be your relation; this man Flynn, this Jackson Brant
the gambler, this Hamilton Brant the outlaw--WAS YOUR FATHER! Ah,
yes! Weep on, my son; each tear of love and forgiveness from thee hath
vicarious power to wash away his sin."

With a single sweep of his protecting hand he drew Clarence towards
his breast, until the boy slowly sank upon his knees at his feet. Then,