Page:Left to Themselves (1891).djvu/312

 est his heart at the beginning. He weakened, and was pretty glad to find that he had not brought worse on your father than he did."

"Worse than he did? How could he? Did he not cost him his honest reputation and shorten his life? Did he not break my mother's heart? Did he not make me grow up with a stain on my name because I was—my father's son?"

"Perhaps you are right. But, any rate, the thing ended as it did. And Sixmith—well, he thought more and more about his job, I suppose, when he was shut up, and as time went on, Touchtone, he grew more and more ashamed of it. At last, about seven years ago, he died—down in New York. Laverack died before that. I'd met Sixmith again, and I was with him when he died. It was one of my winters in New York. He told me every thing. We talked the bank affair all over. At last he said he wanted me to write down a kind of confession, or at least a statement, in which he gave his own account of what he had managed to do for your father, swearing in it, up and down, to your father's innocence."