"I decline jurisdiction," said Glenalmond, with extreme seriousness.
"But, my dear boy, if it will do you any good to talk, and if it will
interest you at all to hear what I may choose to say when I have heard
you, I am quite at your command. Let an old man say it, for once, and
not need to blush: I love you like a son."

There came a sudden sharp sound in Archie's throat. "Ay," he cried,
"and there it is! Love! Like a son! And how do you think I love my
father?"

"Quietly, quietly," says my lord.

"I will be very quiet," replied Archie. "And I will be baldly frank. I
do not love my father; I wonder sometimes if I do not hate him. There's
my shame; perhaps my sin; at least, and in the sight of God, not my
fault. How was I to love him? He has never spoken to me, never smiled
upon me; I do not think he ever touched me. You know the way he talks?
You do not talk so, yet you can sit and hear him without shuddering, and
I cannot. My soul is sick when he begins with it; I could smite him in
the mouth. And all that's nothing. I was at the trial of this Jopp.
You were not there, but you must have heard him often; the man's
notorious for it, for being - look at my position! he's my father and
this is how I have to speak of him - notorious for being a brute and
cruel and a coward. Lord Glenalmond, I give you my word, when I came
out of that Court, I longed to die - the shame of it was beyond my
strength: but I - I -" he rose from his seat and began to pace the room
in a disorder. "Well, who am I? A boy, who have never been tried, have
never done anything except this twopenny impotent folly with my father.
But I tell you, my lord, and I know myself, I am at least that kind of a
man - or that kind of a boy, if you prefer it - that I could die in