face to which I have been blind these months. Blind with the
eyes of my body, at least. The eyes of my soul saw and
recognized you when first they fell on you in Perth. The voice
of the blood ordered me then to your side, and though I heard
its call, I understood not what it meant. Read this letter,
boy - the letter that you were to have carried to Colonel
Pride."

With his eyes still fixed in a gaze of stupefaction upon
Galliard's face, Kenneth took the paper. Then slowly,
involuntarily almost it seemed, he dropped his glance to it,
and read. He was long in reading, as though the writing
presented difficulties, and his two companions watched him the
while, and waited. At last he turned the paper over, and
examined seal and superscription as if suspicious that he held
a forgery.

But in some subtle, mysterious way - that voice of the blood
perchance to which Crispin had alluded - he felt conviction
stealing down upon his soul. Mechanically he moved across to
the table, and sat down. Without a word, and still holding the
crumpled letter in his clenched hand, he set his elbows on the
table, and, pressing his temples to his palms, he sat there
dumb. Within him a very volcano raged, and its fires were fed
with loathing - loathing for this man whom he had ever hated,
yet never as he hated him now, knowing him to be his father.
It seemed as if to all the wrongs which Crispin had done him
during the months of their acquaintanceship he had now added a
fresh and culminating wrong by discovering this parentage.