"Keep to your prayers, and let me go my own way, it's the shortest,"
muttered Harry, with his face hidden, and his head down on his
folded arms.

"Boys, boys, you'll kill me if you say such things! I have more now
than I can bear. Don't drive me wild with your reproaches to each
other!" cried their mother, her heart rent with the remorse that
came too late.

"No fear of that; you are not a Carrol," answered Harry, with the
pitiless bluntness of a resentful and rebellious boy.

Augustine turned on him with a wrathful flash of the eye, and a
warning ring in his stern voice, as he pointed to the door.

"You shall not insult your mother! Ask her pardon, or go!"

"She should ask mine! I'll go. When you want me, you'll know where
to find me." And, with a reckless laugh, Harry stormed out of the
room.

Augustine's indignant face grew full of a new trouble as the door
banged below, and he pressed his thin hands tightly together,
saying, as if to himself:

"Heaven help me! Yes, I do know; for, night after night, I find and
bring the poor lad home from gambling-tables and the hells where
souls like his are lost."

Here Christie thought to slip away, feeling that it was no place for