Page:The Iron Pirate 1905.djvu/364

350 Somewhere down in that human well of crime and ferocity there was a spring of purer water. I had set it free when I brought old memories to him, and I owed it to him that amazing chance that I lived through the frenzies of Ice-haven.

"Yes," said Black, observing my surprise, and passing me the liquor which he compelled me to drink; "my boy was your height, and your build, and he had your eyes. What's more, he had your grit, and there was no cooler hand living. Not that he owed much to me, for I was mad drunk half his life; and, when sober, I lived as often as not in prison for what I had done in liquor. It was when he was nearly twenty that the change came; for he began to bring home money, do you see? and what with his work and the way he talked to me, I set myself to get the craving under; and I was a new man in one year, and in two my brain came back to me, and I made the discovery that I was not born a fool. You may reckon I worshipped the lad! God knows, he and his mother did for me more than man or woman ever did for a breathing body. And when my wits came back to me, and I thought what I might have done, and what I had done, and that my boy had borne it all only to drag me to my reason at hist, I could have ended it there and then. Maybe I should have done it if a new turn hadn't come in my life's road. It was when I