continued his story.

"As a boy I was cared for by an over-indulgent aunt, and I have often
thought that the fact of having lost my own mother might, in some way,
make an excuse to heaven for me, for the boy or girl who never knows a
mother has suffered more than mortal can count,--in ways more numerous
than mortal can see, and a motherless babe is the saddest story in all
human history. Well, money had been left for me, and this too, I
believe, was an inherited wrong, for too early in life had I begun to
feel independent. Later that indifference to discipline grew to
recklessness, and then the final evil came in the shape of bad company."

Major Dale stopped the speaker for a moment and Dorothy was glad to move
a little nearer her father. Somehow, this strange story was unlike
anything she had ever heard, and while it fascinated her, it also
frightened her, for she had not before known anyone who had lived such a
wild life.

"And here is where your daughter, Major Dale, has come so strangely into
my life," went on Mr. Burlock. "The good people of this town have been
working hard to save such men as I have been--but no longer will I rank
myself with such. That young man, Ralph Willoby, had pleaded with me in
a way few could have resisted, but the trouble was, I was in the hands
of a man who had been my evil genius for years, and no matter how firm
was my resolve to get away from temptation, this tyrant would manage to
put the poison into my hands. Of course I thought him a friend,--that
was what he had always pretended to be,--but through the strange
interference of this little girl,"--laying his hand on Dorothy,--"I
have seen the light; the scales have fallen from my eyes."