Ballin looked up from his chair with the look of a sick man.

"It's this, Charlie," he said in a voice that came with difficulty.
"It's a mistake to suppose that I am a rich man. Everything in this
world that I honestly thought belonged to me belongs to Mr. Forrest."

The earl read truth in the ashen, careworn face of his love's father.

"But surely," he said anxiously, "Dorothy is still yours--to give."

Forrest's dark and brooding countenance became as if suddenly brightly
lighted.

"My boy--my boy!" he cried, and he folded the wriggling and embarrassed
Stuart in his long, gaunt arms.

I think an angel bringing glad tidings might have looked as Forrest did
when, releasing the Earl of Moray, he turned upon the impulse and began
to pour out words to Ballin.

"When I found out who I was," he said, "and realized for how long--oh,
my Lord! how long--others had been enjoying what was mine, and that I
had rubbed myself bare and bleeding against all the rough places of
life, will you understand what a rage and bitterness against you all
possessed me? And I came--oh, on wings--to trample, and to dispossess,
and to sneer, and to send you packing.... But first the peace of the
woods and the meadows, and the beech wood and the gardens, and the quiet
hills and the little brooks staggered me. And then you--the way you took
it, cousin!--all pale and wretched as you were; you were so calm, and
you admitted the claim at once--and bore up.... Then I began to repent