and more fortunate mortals!  I know I shouldn’ be complaining like this—­certainly not to you, Uncle Paul, who have been all most fathers are to most boys!  But there are times, you know, when you persist in keeping me at arm’s length as you keep everyone else!  When you put up that sign, ‘Thus far and no further!’ I feel myself almost a stranger!  Won’t you let me come nearer?  Won’t you take down that barrier between us and let me have a father—­at least, in name?  I’m tired of calling you ‘Uncle’ who uncle never was and never could be!  You’re far more of a father—­really you are!  Let me call you in name what you have always been in spirit.  Let me say ‘Father Paul!’ I like the sound of it, don’t you?  ‘Father Paul!’—­’Father Paul!’”

Paul Verdayne felt every drop of blood leave his face.  He felt as if the Boy had inadvertently laid a cold hand upon his naked heart, chilling, paralyzing its every beat.  What did he mean?  The Boy was just then looking thoughtfully at the setting sun and did not see the change that his words called into his companion’s face—­thank heaven for that!—­but what could he mean?

“You can call yourself my ‘Father Confessor,’ you know, if you entertain any scruples as to the propriety of a staid old bachelor’s fathering a stray young cub like me—­that will make it all right, surely!  You will let me, won’t you?  In all the world there is no one so close to me as you, and such dreams as I may happily bring to fulfillment will be, more than you know, because of your guidance, your inspiration.  You are the father of my spirit, whoever may have been the father of my flesh!  Let it be hereafter, then, not ‘Uncle,’ but ’Father Paul’!”

And the older man, rising and standing by the Boy, threw his arm around the young shoulders, and gazing far off to the distant west, felt himself shaken by a strange emotion as he answered, “Yes, Boy, hereafter let it be ‘Father Paul!’”

And as the sun travelled faster and faster toward the line of its crossing between the worlds of night and day, its rays reflected a new radiance upon the faces of the two men who sat in the silent shadows of the park, feeling themselves drawn more closely together than ever before, thinking, thinking, thinking-in the eyes of the man a great memory, in the eyes of the Boy a great longing for life!

* * * * *

The two friends ran up to London for the theatre that night, to see a famous actor in a popular play, but neither was much interested in the performance.  Something had kindled in the heart of the man a reminiscent fire and the Boy was thinking his own thoughts and listening, ever listening.