FullReads

I bowed an assent.

“From these evidences, that bear the force of truth, it is plain that she was innocent, though adjudged guilty of one of the most heinous offences against society. Innocent, and yet made to suffer all the penalties of guilt. Ah, sir–I thought life had already brought me its bitterest cup: but all before were sweet to the taste compared with the one I am now compelled to drink. Nothing is now left me, but to take home my child. But, as he grows up toward manhood, how can I look him in the face, and think of his mother whom I so deeply wronged.”

“The events of the past, my dear sir,” I urged, “cannot be altered. In a case like this, it is better to look, forward with hope, than backward with self-reproaches.”

“There is little in the future to hope for,” was the mournful reply to this.

“But you have a duty to perform, and, in the path of duty, always lie pleasures.”

“You mean to my much wronged and suffering child. Yes, I have a duty, and it shall be performed as faithfully as lies in my power. But I hope for little from that source.”

“I think you may hope for much. Your child I have questioned closely. He knows nothing of his history; does not even know that his father is alive. The only information he has received from his mother is, that W—-is his uncle.”

“Are you sure of this?”

“Oh yes. I have, as I said, questioned him very closely on this point.”

This seemed to relieve the mind of Mr. Miller. He mused for some minutes, and then said–

“I wish to see my son, and at once remove him from his present position. May I ask you to accompany me to the place where he now is.”

“I will go with pleasure,” I returned, rising.

We left my office immediately, and went direct to Maxwell’s shop. As we entered, we heard most agonizing cries, mingled with hoarse angry imprecations from the shoemaker and the sound of his strap. He was whipping some one most severely. My heart misgave me that it was poor little Bill. We hurried into the shop. It was true. Maxwell had the child across his knees, and was beating him most cruelly.

“That is your son,” I said, in an excited voice to Miller, pointing to the writhing subject of the shoemaker’s ire. In an instant Maxwell was lying four or five feet from his bench in a corner of his shop, among the lasts and scraps of leather. A powerful blow on the side of his head, with a heavy cane, had done his. The father’s hand had dealt it. Maxwell rose to his feet in a terrible fury, but the upraised cane of Miller, his dark and angry countenance, and his declaration that if he advanced a step toward him, or attempted to lay his hand again upon the boy, he would knock his brains out, cooled his ire considerably.

“Come, my boy,” Miller then said, catching hold of the hand of the sobbing child–“let me take you away from this accursed den for ever.”

“Stop!” cried Maxwell, coming forward at this; “you cannot take that boy away. He is bound to me by law, until he is twenty-one. Bill! don’t you dare to go.”

“Villain!” said Miller, in a paroxysm of anger, turning toward him–“I will have you before the the court in less than twenty-four hours for inhuman treatment of this child–of my child.”

As Miller said this, the trembling boy at his side started and looked eagerly in his face.

“Oh, sir! Are you indeed my father?” said he, in a voice that thrilled me to the finger ends.

“Yes, William; I am your father, and I have come to take you home.”

Tears gushed like rain over the cheeks of the poor boy. He shrank close to his father’s side, and clung to him with a strong grasp, still looking up into a face that he had never hoped to see, with a most tender, confiding, hopeful, expressive countenance.

The announcement of the fact subdued the angry shoemaker. He made a feeble effort at apology, but was cut short by our turning abruptly from him and carrying of the child he had so shamefully abused.

I parted from the father and son at the first carriage-stand that came in our way. When I next saw Bill, his appearance was very different indeed from what it was when I first encountered him. His father lived some ten years from this time during the most of which period William was at school or college. At his death he left him a large property, which remained with him until his own death, which took place a few years ago. He never I believe, had the most distant idea of the cause which had separated his mother from his father. That there had been a separation he knew too well but, he always shrank from inquiring the reason, and had always remained in ignorance of the main facts here recorded.