"Bless me! then get in, and have thy dinner. But first--" and my
inexorable father held him by the shoulder; "thee art a decent lad,
come of decent parents?"

"Yes," almost indignantly.

"Thee works for thy living?"

"I do, whenever I can get it."

"Thee hast never been in gaol?"

"No!" thundered out the lad, with a furious look. "I don't want your
dinner, sir; I would have stayed, because your son asked me, and he
was civil to me, and I liked him. Now I think I had better go. Good
day, sir."

There is a verse in a very old Book--even in its human histories the
most pathetic of all books--which runs thus:

"And it came to pass when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul,
that the soul of Jonathan was knit unto the soul of David; and
Jonathan loved him as his own soul."

And this day, I, a poorer and more helpless Jonathan, had found my
David.

I caught him by the hand, and would not let him go.