A BRAND FROM THE BURNING.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1756, 1 November 1905, Page 6

A BRAND FROM THE BURNING.

(By Guy Wetmore Carry 1, author of “Far From the Maddening Girls,” etai In one of the tiny dressing-rooms of ‘Bertram’s Palace of Vaudeville” Felix, camped upon his father’s trunk, had not opened his thin lips for twenty minutes. His eyes, round, candid, and very blue, turned at fifteen-second intervals to the little clock which hung upon the opposite wall, and then came back to the figure of the j|jggler, prinking before the mirror. Aslittle as possible Felix resembled a guardian angel; as much as anything that is what he was. ‘ The juggler who in private life was Jean Martel, but self-styled for programme purposes, L’Eclair (by reason of supposedly incomparable swiftness of execution), was the victim of an inordinate and scantily justified vanity. It was the nob illogical outcome of his life—a life lived in the glare of more or less brilliant footlights, and to the accompaniment of cheap orchestras and cheaper, applause. Hie was a mountebank by instinct as well as by profession, and supplemented his somewhat uncertain facility in the manipulation of knives and' silver balls by airs and graces which suggested a heavily built kitten. If he suspected, as he could hardly fail to do, that the tall, green battle, labelled “Pernod Freres,” to which he had daily recourse, was impairing year by year the accuracy of his eye and the steadiness of his hand, he did not take the initiative in any attempt to remedy the evil. That, was left for Felix, who had assumed the duties of guardian angel when his dispirited mother had laid them down—who could have said with what infinity of gratitude ?r—in the rear of the saltimbanque’s tent at the Fete de Neuilly, three years before. The death of Madame Mantel had brought about one immediate and stupendous change in the life of the juggler and his son. The grief of L’Eclair, at first grotesque in its extravagance, vanished into thin air at the discovery of her unsuspected savings, hoarded franc by franc, /during eleven years of wandering through France from fete to fete. • The astonishing total l was one of sixty louis, enough to place his fondest dream within his grasp. In Ame,rica things were different. La-bas, on ramassait la galette avec une pelle! In the ecstasy of this reflection L’Eclair strained Felix to hi© heart. Their troubles were at an end, he cried; they were through with peasants, fetes, and little harvests of reluctant sous. Over there one may gather pancakes with a ■hovel. America! —the reward of all our troubles my lad! And that night L’Eclair was very pitifully drunk, while Felix watched beside his pale, still mother, and planned out the future in hi© grave, unchildish mind. One week later they had taken the momentous step, and , thereafter, for three years, a life but little different from the other had gone forward. It was not wholly evident that one gathered gold by shovelfuls in America. From town to town of this boundless new country to which they had l come they made their way playing to unenthueiastic audiences in the cheap variety halls, descending now and again to a tent at. one or another of the innumerable county fairs, at the worst a trifle better off than they had been in France, at the best almost successful. In the beginning Felix was not only the actual but the apparent assistant, and had his position on the stage. But the consuming vanity of L’Eclair could brook no sharing of the public attention with another. He was jealous even- of Felix, who was presently banished to the wings, where he could assist, and yet not.be seen. The hoy now. spoke English like a native, and off the boards • supervised his father like a tyrant. His attitude toward the juggler was a. curious admixture of idolatry and distrust. In his professional capacity L’Eelair was a god in the eye© of his son, agile, dexterous, and beyond comparison dazzling in his pink tights .and spangled trunks, and with the gloss of pomatum on his flat, hair; in private he was a child, to be petted, rebuked, or flattered, as the case might be—but always to be watched, lest, absinthe should steal away his earnings and the means of. winning them. One* lesson Felix had' learned at the time of his mother’s death; he never let a coin ' slip by. . The nature of L’Eolair was sporadically generous. Now and again, in a burst of maudlin affection induced by his pet beverage he would press a hill or some silver upon the hoy, and however trifling the gratuity, it went to swell the fund which Felix was hoarding, and which never left his person. And if he did not stop at this, but filched l occasionally, when the tall, green bottle had the upper hand, did not the end perhaps justify the means. As well as might be, Felix lived up to his lights. They were not brilliant lights nor very white, but then again it was not the least complicated of businesses to be guarding angel to L’Elclair. In the end, the miracle, long-expect-ed, and long-deferred had come to pass. What Mecca is to the Faithful, or the Salon to the Quartier Latin, ‘'Bertram’s Palaces of Vaudeville” are to the acrobat, the ballad-singer, and the

knockabout comedian. An engagement to appear upon the boards of one or another of them is illuminated by a significance all its own. It mean© the top rung of the specialty ladder, the Pisgab from whose dizzy summit one first looks forth upon the Promised Land of musical comedy. It means recognition. It means that one has arrivrived. Ota the night when, the contract for a two weeks’ engagement was signed L’Eclair was very pitifully drank again.

A curious type was Mr Peter Beit ram, a type manifestly irreconcilable with preconceived ideas and precedents alike. Qnly at rare intervals did l he show himself behind the scenes of the theatres which bore his name. He was a quiet, inconspicuous man, inclined to stoutness, with a good manner, and a pleasing infrequency of speech as far as possible from suggesting the theatrical manager of tradition; and in his narrow, black ties, his severely simple clothe©, and his common-sense, squaretoed shoes, one traced no remotest hint otokinship with the brilliant illuminated signs which in twenty cities proclaimed the existence of “Bertram’s Palaces of Vaudeville.” A® a matter of fact, the appearances were only in part deceitful, for the contrast between his public and private life lay deeper than surface indications. With a humour dry almost to grimness, he found in his own case an analogy to that of the clown, who, oftener than not, has small cause for laughter behind the paint and powder with which it is his business to divert his audiences. Life had, not been kind to Peter Bertram. The great chain of playhouses which had come into being under hisi direction, and the resultant fortune which piled up giddily as the years went by—these, a© men measure success, should have made him grateful. And grateful, in a sense, no doubt he was. But, while giving lavishly with his left hand, his providence had taken greedily with the right. Another Peter Bertram, and the frail, slender mother, who had given her life for his, slept, side by side, in Mount Auburn, and, even as his twenty theatres rank daily with laughter and applause, the proprietor’s great house in Cambridge stood hushed and dimly lighted, peopled by inconspicuous, respectful servants, by crowding memories of the twain he had lost, and by the reveries of this one lonely, sad old man.

professional pride held him linked to the vast, amusement enterprise for which his name stood sponsor. Lacking the inspiration of his supervision, it must have failed, or, at the best, fallen lamentably below the standard he had set. For Bertram was a man of the people in the most auspicious sense of the word. From the moment when he had opened a tiny, unpretentious variety theatre in Boston he had staked all upon his conviction that the American public will support, if not enthusiastically, at least consistently, what is wholesome, sane, and decent. Withal, he shrewdly gave it credit for a garish taste, a predilection for green marble, mirrors, paintings, red velvet, and a multiplicity of coloured lights, and catered boldly tothis, without overshooting the mark. The chain of theatres which now marked the achievement of his ideals were well named “palaces.” They were superlatively gaudy, but it was a solid, clean gaudiness, and what went forward on their stages was free, on the one hand, from impropriety, and, on the other, from mediocrity. For the rest, they were crowded, at every performance, to' the doors. It is an argument to which a manager has no need to appeal. It speak© for itself.

Yes, it was nothing short of a miracle that L’Eclair had secured an engagement at Bertram’s Boston playhouse. He could not have expeced to understand the dilemma of a sub-manager who finds his programme for the forthcoming week two l number© short, and who turns, therefore, to the proffered services of an unproved juggler, as the mariner upon a sinking vessel to a dubiously stable bit- of wreckage, as a means of salvation. For Felix and L’Eclair there was something surprising, perhaps, but nothing illogical, in the circumstances. It meant, simply, that ability, long neglected, had at last been fittingly recognised. Felix had no doubt whatever of the genius of L’Eclair. It was still more certain that L’Elclair had no doubt whatever of his own.

But Felix,, if his optimism mistook the cause of this good fortune, was keenly alive to its importance. To Have achieved a two weeks’ engagement at the Poston house was only the first step the triumphal progress which he was planning for L’Elclair. It remained to secure the rest, to follow this engagement with one at each of Bertram’s nineteen other theatres, and to' make that tour but the first of two—of three —of ten—of. tour© ad infinitum—so that every year should be simply a kind of glorious, glittering merry-go-round for the juggler, with gold beyond the dreams of avarice, and with applause beytmd the hopes of pride. This, in somewhat simpler form, was what Felix was thinking now with an uneasy perception that the pdfcsibility of it all hung upon the impression to be made upon the audience even then assembled. In fifteen minutes L’Eclair would make his

first bow under Peter Bertram’s management, and then—•— Felix glanced for the eightieth time at the little nickel clock. It was ticking more slowly than his heart ! “V’la” exclaimed the juggler. “It is near the time, mon brave. Let usi go out.”

They made their way through the narrow hallway, and emerged upon the stage. The lower drop was down, and through it the glare of the footlights struck in little patches, where the paint was thin. From the front came the sound of the orchestra, of people laughing, and of a man’s voice singing a patter song at an incredible' rate of speed. Behind, they were setting the full stage) of L’Eblair’s act. The walls of a marble palace slid downward, lisping, from the flies and were trundled smoothly forward from the sides. With mathematical precision they leaned together at their edges, under practised hands, and were clamped properly in pl&ce. Following them, a great, square rug was lowered on pulleys, and spread dexterously on the) stage. Men went rapidly to and fro, directed, now and again, by a snap of the stage-manageris fingers or an explicit motion of hi© hand. It was a live silence, a triumph of mute method.

Pausing only for a glance of rapt admiration at a setting so magnificently more elaborate than any in which his father had ever had the fortune to appear, Felix turned to the duties in which practice had long since made him perfect. The juggler’© little tables, covered with silver-fringed plush, and loaded with his knives and balls and cubes, a© Felix had arranged them, threequarters of an hour before, Avere standing in a group at the rear of the stage. The boy knew to a nicety where each should be placed, and so set them carefully, touching the properties with something like a reverent caress, and dusting each in turn with a square of well-worn silk. For one little moment he wished they were larger, more imposing. So far, they had fully served their purpose, but here, on this wide, deep stage, they suddenly looked even smaller and dingier than they were. But what of that? Was not L’Eclair to be paid fifty dollars a week —twice as much as, in the best of circumstances, he had ever earned before? Soon, they would be able to afford a new outfit. One must not ask too much at first. Then. Felix took his station in the wing.

L’Eclair, who had been Avaiting there, tAvirling his moustache, and giving complacent pats to his elaborately arranged hair, suddenly kicked off the shabby carpet slippers which protected his satin shoes. The drop rose, and the scene, which had been till them in a kind of twilight, was flooded with brilliancy. “Bonne chance!” whispered Felix, picking up the slippers. L’Eclair skipped nimbly forward, kissed his finger-tip®, executed a fantastic pirouette, and sent a silver ball whirling high into the air. The act was on.

Fresh from a consultation with Keyes, the local manager, Peter Bertram stepped, at this moment, to the wing and stood watching the juggler over the boy’© head. Presently he frowned; It

was a type, this, which he disliked. L’Elclair was in the' neighbourhood of forty. He hada small, testy face, and his eyes were like a mackerel’s, cold, fixed, and selfish. The charity of distance, which so kindly softens the crudity of make-up, was lacking here, and his very features were less insistent than the black with which he had thickly pencilled his lashes, or the pur-ple-pink upon his cheeks. His rose-col-oured tights crinkled ungracefully upon his legs and arms. Whati was worse, he was distinctly shabby, distinctly below standard. The tinsel on his spangled trunks and at his wrists and neck was tarnished, as were the fringes on his little tables, and the silver of the cubes and balls. Curiously the glossiness of his elaborate hair, and the pretentious twist of his moustache were an added offence in the eyes of Peter Bertram. He felt a© if in these particulars lay an attempt—an attempt akin to that of cheap perfumery—to divert the attention of the observer from the absence of essential cleanliness and propriety. To his fastidious thinking, all that redeemed his business from the reproach of commonality was his insistence upon perfection in every detail. Failing in this conscientious particularity, he became, in his own estimation, the vulgarest of showmen, at one with the charlatans of the circus, the dime museum, and the county fair. He had a conscience towards his audiences. H© liked to- hear their laughter and their applause, to know that he had made these possible, that his sense of what was right and proper had brought into being a refuge from the sordidness and care of the workaday life outside, and. that every day, in each of twenty cities, a thousand people forgot their worries, griefs, and disappointments in the amusement which he furnished them. But greater than this pleasure was the thought that he was party to a fair exchange, that his public expected the best and only the best at his hands — and went home satisfied. But L’Eclair was not the. best. He was not even tolerable. On this earn© stage Prince Koto had built his glittering pyramids of crystal, Flanagan had balanced cigar boxes and a lamp, and Quattromonti had performed his miracle with the brimming wine-glass. Therefore, when Bertram’ announced a juggler, it should be a better thing than this smirking, shabby mountebank, with his stale tricks, his soiled costume, and his dingy properties./ Bertram thrust his hands into his pockets. “I must haul Keyes up for this,” ho said to himself. “What was he thinking of?”'

L’Elclair had been busy Avith the largest silver ball. It bad slipped more than once, and, even at the best s what he made it do was not remarkable. At the end, he held it balanced for an instant on his outstreached wrist, and then, with a little cry of “Houp!” sent it .flying straight at the head of Peter Bertram, in the Aving. The manager had forgotten that he Avas not alone, and was stepping back instinctively, when the bands of the boy in front shot up and caught the ball deftly as it flew.

His attention thus directed to. Felix.

Bertram leaned forward, tightening his lips at the corners, and with a curious little quickening of his pulse. There was something vaguely, hauntingly familiar in the crinkling of this crisp, ruddy hair, in the resolute fling of these narrow shoulders, in the confident poise of these straight and slender.legs. Where had he seen the like before? An impulse touched him, and, leaving his place, he mad l © his way around behind the back-drop, past great, dim piles of indeterminate properties, and came into view of the stage again, at the opposite wing. TTis elbow touched the support of a portable electric .reflector, and with his right hand he reached up and turned the button. A' straight shaft of powerful light struck sharply across the stage, and fell full on the face of Felix. A tiny, unenthusiastic ripple of applause stirred in the auditorium. L’Eel air was wiping his hands upon a handkerchief. Even in that moment of . his amazed surprise Peter Bertram noted, with a sniff, that it was unbelievably sailed. Feature for feature, line for line, the boy at whom he was staring was the breathing image of Peter Bertram, 2nd, asleep, these twenty yeans; in his little grave! Even so his thin hands were wont to close, his eyes to shine, and his month to quiver, in moments of excitement or eager attention. Even ®o he drew his breath slowly and then let it escape in a short, quick sigh. Even so his small, freckled face would, be lit with a something more Ultimately appealing than the beauty it conspicuously missed, and his figure would settle into easy attitudes, or stiffen into tense, with a grace that charmed more surely than the strength it lacked. Peter Bertram’s memory, swept instantly backward twenty years, retraced the way slowly, gathering visions as it came. “Laddie” —so he was wont to call him —would now be thirty-five—a man ! In the golden prime of life, college-bred, as his father was not, strong, accomplished, confident, fitted by the magic wands of wealth and inherited ability to succeed where by reason of countless limitations, the elder Bertram felt that he had failed, he would take no share in this gaudy business of specialty. A representative of that wonderful product of e.voLution, the American second generation, he would glorify and hallow the fortune sordid!jfe earned, by proficiency in some nobler calling. He would be ,a lawyer, a physician, an author, or a painter, secure from the dwarfing fingers of necessity in the dollars reaped by the earnest, adoring, proud old man who could feel at last , that he had contributed, even indirectly, to the sum total of the world’s scholarship and refinement. Nay, more, he would turn to his father with a compensating smile—- ' “Dad—dear old Dad,” he would say perhaps, “you made this possible.”

A sudden fullness swelled in Peter Bertram’s throat, and he drew his breath sharply, winking hard to keep back the smarting tears of age. It would have been worth while, that — well, well worth while! But now. Out of the haze of preoccupation the face of Felix came back to him—the image, unspeakably appealing of what he had loved most dearly in the world. There was no need to tell Peter Bertram how different from the future he had dreamt of for his son would be that of the boy in the opposite wing. He stood on the wrong side of the footlights, the side where the unmerciful brilliance of electricity and the damning intimacy of proximity turned a smile to a smirk, illusion to sordid reality, gold to tinsel, and a jest to grim and deadly earnest. What was more, at this moment Felix was less to> be pitied than it was likely he had ever been or would he again. The stage of Bertram’s theatre, cheerless though It might he, was yet clean, decent, and respectable—almost homelike in comparison . with others given over to variety. In his mind’s eye Bertram could see the dinginess and squalor with which this boy must long since have become familiar, as from town to town and from playhouse to playhouse, he followed his unspeakable father. For there was no such thing as giving IVEiclair the benefit of the doubt. The oily hair proclaimed his vanity, the cold, dead eyes his selfishness, and every feature his slavery to drink. In them all one could read the lot of jhis associate as in an open book. Down—down —down—down! The fresh flowers of youth blighted and blackening, one by one, the boy-dreams not only unfulfilled, but for ever made impossible, the eyes spiled, the lips soiled, the heart and soul soiled, the boy a man before his time, and the man ruined before the man was fairly born. Down —down—down! /

Peter Bertram looked up blindly. The drop had fallen—and the applause was over before it had touched the boards! IVEcLair was shuffling into his slippers, and calling, under his breath, upon his gods—who compensated in number for what they lacked in potency. Felix was gathering up the balls arid knives, his small teeth nicking his lower lip in an effort to control its tremor. The intuition beyond his years which his experience had g|iven him told him without equivocation that D’Eclair'had failed. To perceive, with Peter Bertram, was to think, and to think was, almost sim-

ultaneously, to act. It had been the essential secret, of his success. While other men were casting up the chances of profit or loss he would be proffering terms ; while they were bargaining he was blotting the signatures on contracts. Now, he walked directly across the stage, deliberately avoiding a glance at Felix as he passed, and, a moment later, having inquired of the stage-man-agerwhich was L’Eclair’® dressing-room, he tapped upon the door. The juggler hastily replaced the cork in the tall, green bottle, hid the latter beneath the table, and fretfully called “Entre!” ‘L’Eelair ?” said Bertram. The other wheeled upon him, with an exclamation of surprise. He had expected Felix. “You speak English?” asked the manager. “Ee-nough to un’erstan’,” replied the juggler, with no evidence of friendliness. ‘‘Oo you are ? W’at you wan’ ?” Peter Bertram stated his case. He was a man of few words and his instinctive contempt for L’Bclair lent his speech an added eurtne&s. Moreover, he had measured his man. It was to be an appeal to cupidity, pure and simple. No hint of his true reasons, no least suggestion of sentiment, nothing but what was.;.most likely to accomplish his purpose as promptly and as conclusively as possible—the suggested crackle of now bank-notes, the metaphorical ring* of gold. When the short, stiff speech was ended; Peter Bertram had offered L’Eclair five thousand dollars to surrender Felix absolutely, and one hundred ~ dollars a month so long as he should see fit to keep out of America. „ Then he folded his arms, and looked the juggler in the eye. His face showed somewhat less emotion than that of .a graven image, but his firm, strong thumbs were deep-sunk in the under surface of his arms. It would have been worth the same sum over to L’E'clair to have known this simple fact. Even as it was, he seemed to. have some small suspicion of his opportunity. “W’y you wan’ ’im?"’ he inquired. “That’s neither here nor there,” retorted Mr Bertram. “There’s my offer —to take or to leave. Speak quick, my man. I didn’t come here to talk.”

L’Eel air’s mind was very busy. For your mountebank is like the hunted wild things in that liis instinct teaches him to take instant advantage of every unexpected shelter*, of every unforeseen means of escape. He had failed. Even his vanity could not blind him to the realisation that he had undertaken something which it was beyond his power to negotiate, and with this knowledge had come, a great disgust for the whole business of juggling. After all, what difference did it make, whether he understood or no? All that was of importance was this:—A man (presumably insane) was offering him five thousand dollars to do what he had often meditated doing without inducement.—get rid of the boy. And a hundred dollars a month all his life! For why should he wish to return to America, when he could live at ease in Paris, drink absinthe in front of the Cyrano, fling hi® heels and his money about at La Galette? Poof! He at least was not insane. He shrugged his shoulders. “Vert well,” he said. “W’en you pay?” “There is no time like the present,” said Mr Bertram. “I will have my attorney draw up the paper®, and I will meet you in Mr Keyes’s office to-morrow at noon to sign them."' There is a steamer sailing on Wednesday. See you take it. 1 shall have you watched.” L’Eclair bowed. As the door closed behind the manager, he executed a brilliant pirouette, and snapped his fingers.

Thi© time as Peter Bertram crossed the stage he looked eagerly for Felix, and, when he discovered him in a faxcorn er locking, the juggler’s propertytrunk, went slowly toward him. It was the slack hour of six, when half the thin audience had come too soon and half remained too long. The scene-shifters and the stage manager had gone to supper. Into the* cool, dim world of behind scene© penetrated no hint of the winkings and shimmerings of the big biograph in front, which was splashing a vast square of white canvas with yachts, Italian cavalry, shirt dancers, express trains, and storm-smitten surf. The darkness of the empty stage was emphasised by a single electric' light, the scenery hoisted out of sight or stacked abjectly against the brick side-wall®. At the rear, where all the paraphernalia called for in the course of forty consecutive acts per day was systematically piled, Felix rose slowly from his knees. He had taken twenty minutes to the task of putting away the knives and cubes and silver balls, against the evening performance. He was accustomed to do the work in five, hut he was in no hurry just now to meet L’Eblair. “Laddie!” Who of all Peter Bertram’s acquaintances would have known his voice, as, in the semi-gloom, he spoke the word ? It broke the silence, and trembled with the agony of twenty yeans! Felix came forward wonderingly, until the two- stood face to face. • “Are you calling me, sir?” he asked quietly, looking up into the manager’s eyes. .''...' ■ ..... , ... y , . Bertram laid his hands upon the parrow shoulders. “How old are you, my boy ?”

/“Thirteen, sir.” “Ah? Younger than I thought. I should have said fifteen, at least. You are tall for your age. And your name?” “Felix Martel.” “And you love your father yonder—the juggler?” “Why not, eir?” said Fehx with a smile and a. little shrug which told bis birth. “He is my father. Kind? Yes —he is kind. You are Mr Bertram?” “Yes. How do you know ?” “I saw you. I asked. They told me. You—you have been tp see my father ? You don't like the act? You are going to send him away-?” He would have, drawn back, but the firm hands on his shoulders held him still. “That was not what we were talking of,” said Peter Bertram, gravely. ‘Listen. Felix. Once I had a little son, a boy like you—yes, very like you. He —he died, Felix, and since _ then I’ve been very lonely, very lonely indeed, my boy. Well, then, I’ve been talking with your father, and he —and we think it would do better for you not_ to keep on with this sort of thing. You must go to school and to college. You must play football, and —er —all* kinds of games. You must ride horseback. You must learn to be a gentleman. And so, Felix, you’re to come and live with me, in a big house, where you’ll have about everything you want. You see, your father —well, your father is too busy to take care of you that way, so I’ve promised to do it. You’re to take the place of the other one —of the boy who died. Do you think you can do that, Felix?” “I’d like to do it, sir,” said 1 Felix, “but you see I can’t. My father—well, my father doesn’t take care of me so much, Mr Bertram, I take care of him. And he couldn’t get on without me, never in the world. So you see how. it is. He is—he ” He stepped hack now, and offered the manager his hand. “Thank you, just the same,” he added, formally. “I’d have liked the horseback rides, all right.” Then he walked rapidly away toward the juggler’s dressing-room. What happened therein no outsider ever heard or knew. There were a few loud words, then a subdued murmur, then one sharp, instantly stifled cry from Felix, as; L’Eclair had recourse to such an argument as one might have deduced from a look into bis eye.

The documents were signed, and the door had closed upon the jubilant recipient of a certified cheque for five thousand dollars, and an assured income of twelve bundled a year for life. The attorney folded the papers, and took his leave. Mr Keyes, the local manager, caught a look from his superior's eye, and melted through the nearest door. For an instant Peter Bertram drummed noiselessly upon the table with his finger-tips, his eyes upon the slender figure in the window with its-back toward him. “Felix,” he said presently. “Felix!” The boy turned. “What is the matter with your wrist? It’s bruised, my boy—terribly bruised. It wasn’t that way yesterday, when you shook hands with me, out there. Did you—did be——” Felix flung up his chin.

“Don’t make me tell, Mr Bertram,” he answered. “He’s gone now, anyway, so it can’t make any difference.” Peter Bertram’s lips tightened suddenly, as they had tightened when first he perceived L’Eclair’s assistant in the wing. “If he had love and loyalty for that,” he whispered in his heart, “what may he not have for me ; in time?” Then he opened.his arms. ‘Laddie,” he said, “you may be hurt and sorry now, but Pll make it up to you, my little son, so help me God! Try to love me, my hoy, my boy! Tiy to forget him, Laddie!” “It’s hard, at first,” said Felix, wistfully. But he went into the old arms that awaited him.