me free, and years afterwards, in India, I married again and had new
ties, my heart grew still harder to you. I excused myself by knowing
that at least you were cared for, and trained to good by a better guide
than I. But when, by so strange a hazard, the very priest who had
confessed your mother on her deathbed (she was a Catholic) came to India,
and (for he had known me at Limerick) recognized my altered person, and
obeying his penitent's last injunctions, assured me that you were my
son,--oh, John, then, believe me, I hastened back to England on the wings
of remorse! Love you, boy! I have left at Madras three children, young
and fair, by a woman now in heaven, who never wronged me, and, by my
soul, John Ardworth, you are dearer to me than all!"

The father's head drooped on his son's breast as he spoke; then, dashing
away his tears, he resumed,--

"Ah, why would not Braddell permit me, as I proposed, to find for his son
the same guardianship as that to which I intrusted my own? But his
bigotry besotted him; a clergyman of the High Church,--that was worse
than an atheist. I had no choice left to me but the roof of that she-
hypocrite. Yet I ought to have come to England when I heard of the
child's loss, braved duns and all; but I was money-making, money-making,-
-retribution for money-wasting; and--well, it's no use repenting! And--
and there is the lodge, the park, the old trees! Poor Sir Miles!"




CHAPTER XXVI.

THE SPY FLIES.