CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.
HOW I MADE A STILL MORE IMPORTANT DISCOVERY.
A few evenings after the awkward discovery recorded in the last chapter Mr Hawkesbury himself called at our lodgings.

He looked troubled and constrained, but as kind as usual.
He came to tell us how sorry he was to have been deprived of our company that evening, and to offer a sort of apology for his son's conduct.
"I fear from what he tells me that you do not all get on very happily together at the office.

I am so sorry, for I would have liked you all to be friends." It was hardly possible to tell the father frankly what we thought of his son, so I replied, vaguely, "No, we don't get on very well, I'm sorry to say." "The fact is," said Jack, "we never have been friends." "He told me so, greatly to my sorrow." "I suppose he also told you why ?" asked Jack, glancing sharply at the clergyman.
The latter looked disturbed and a trifle confused as he replied, "Yes, he did tell me something which--" "He told you I was a convict's son," said Jack, quietly.
"What!" exclaimed the clergyman, with an involuntary start--"what! No, he didn't tell me that, my poor boy: he never told me that!" "I am," quietly said Jack.
I was amazed at the composure with which he said it, and looked the visitor in the face as he did so.
The face was full of pity and sympathy.

Not a shade of horror crossed it, and for all he was Hawkesbury's father, I liked him more than ever.
"Do you mind telling me what he did say about me ?" asked Jack, presently.
"We will not talk about that," said the clergyman.
Jack looked disposed for a moment to persevere in his demand, but the father's troubled face disarmed him.
"Poor Edward has had great disadvantages," he began, in a half- apologetic, half-melancholy way, "and I often fear I am to blame.

I have thought too much of my work out of doors, and too little of my duty to him.