which I had feared and dreaded, but of something worse--disgrace. My
father was an embezzler, a thief. He had absconded, had run away, like
the coward he was, taking with him what was left of his stealings. The
banking house of which he had been the head was insolvent. The police
were on his track. And, worse and most disgraceful of all, he had not
fled alone. There was a woman with him, a woman whose escapades had
furnished the papers with sensations for years.

I had never been well acquainted with my father. We had never been
friends and companions, like other fathers and sons I knew. I remember
him as a harsh, red-faced man, whom, as a boy, I avoided as much as
possible. As I grew older I never went to him for advice; he was to me a
sort of walking pocket-book, and not much else. Mother has often told
me that she remembers him as something quite different, and I suppose it
must be true, otherwise she would not have married him; but to me he was
a source of supply coupled with a bad temper, that was all. That I was
not utterly impossible, that, going my own gait as I did, I was not a
complete young blackguard, I know now was due entirely to Mother. She
and I were as close friends as I would permit her to be. Father had
neglected us for years, though how much he had neglected and ill-treated
her I did not know until she told me, afterward. She was in delicate
health even then, but, when the blow fell, it was she and not I who bore
up bravely and it was her pluck and nerve, not mine, which pulled us
through that dreadful time.

And it was dreadful. The stories and pictures in the papers! The
rumors, always contradicted, that the embezzler had been caught! The
misrepresentation and lies and scandal! The loss of those whom we had
supposed were friends! Mother bore them all, wore a calm, brave face
in public, and only when alone with me gave way, and then but at rare