Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/393

 land's destiny. It had been left to him to say. It seemed as if God were mocking him.

Standing thus, harried by the look of the sloe-black eyes in this twisted intent face before him, illumination broke upon John Boland's mind. Wrongs, wrongs, wrongs! He perceived that he had wrought great, tremendous wrongs!

For the first time John Boland saw himself in a true perspective, his life as a vaster wreck than his fortune. All at once he wanted, not an opportunity to reconstruct the fortune, but respite in which to reconstruct the life—to undo some of its awful mistakes. It was the coldest, cruelest, meanest thing that could be conceived—what he had done to this boy! All at once he didn't want his acres back—didn't want anything, but just this stupid-looking half-breed's forgiveness. It was an odd craving to come to him but it came; it was there and demanding expression.

"Adam! Adam John!" he labored throatily, reaching toward him. "Can I make it right with you?" His feeling was deep enough that the light in his recessed eyes was dimmed and his long chin trembled. "Will you say so, Adam?"

But Adam John was cannily suspending judgment on this apparent penitence of the man who had dealt with him so ruthlessly. "Mebbe so—you keep off—my island?" he questioned gravely.

"Why—sure! Surely!" J. B.'s voice broke with the sudden surge of emotion that was sweet as he had ever known. "It's yours, boy; yours, of course!" he gulped, grateful tears streaming from the deep sockets of his eyes, while his groping hands found at length the hands of Adam John and shook them with all the