Katherine shivered.  There was a longing in her heart to tell her father that she wanted no more burdens, that life was already so hard as to make her shrink from any more responsibility.  But, looking at him as he lay there in his weakness, she could not say such words as these.

“What is it you want to tell me, Father?” she asked.  Her voice was tender and caressing; he should never have to guess how she shrank from the confidence he wanted to give her, because her instinct told her that it was something which she would not want to hear.

“Do you remember the day we went up to Astor M’Kree’s with the last mail which came through before the waters closed?” he said abruptly, and again Katherine shivered, knowing for a certainty that her father’s trouble was proving too big for him alone.

“Yes, I remember,” she replied very softly,

“That was a black day for me, for it brought dead things to life in a way that I had thought impossible.  I used to know that Oswald Selincourt who has bought the fishing fleet.”

“That one?  Are you sure it is the same?” she asked in surprise.  “The name is uncommon, still it is within the bounds of probability that there might be two, and you said the one you knew was a poor man.”

“I fancy there is no manner of doubt that it is the same,” ’Duke Radford said slowly.  “The day we went to Fort Garry, M’Crawney told me he had a letter from Mr. Selincourt too, in which the new owner said he was a Bristol man, and that he had known what it was to be poor, so did not mean to risk money on ventures he had no chance of controlling, and that was why he was coming here next summer to boss the fleet.”

“Poor Father!” Katherine murmured softly.  “Ah, you may well say poor!” he answered bitterly.  “If it were not for you, the boys, poor Nellie, and her babies, I’d just be thankful to know that I’d never get up from this bed again, for I don’t feel that I have courage to face life now.”

“Father, you must not talk nor think like that, indeed you must not!” she exclaimed, in an imploring tone.  “Think how we need you and how we love you.  Think, too, how desolate we should be without you.”

“That is what I tell myself every hour in the twenty-four, and I shall make as brave a fight for it as I can for your sakes,” he said in a regretful tone, as if his family cares were holding him to life against his will.  Then he went on:  “Oswald Selincourt and I were in the same business house in Bristol years ago, and I did him a great wrong.”

Katherine had a sensation that was almost akin to what she would have felt if someone had dashed a bucket of ice-cold water in her face.  But she did not move nor cry out, did not even gasp, only sat still with the dumb horror of it all filling her heart, until she felt as if she would never feel happy again.  Her father had always seemed to her the noblest of men, and she had revered him so, because he always stood for what was right and true.  Then some instinct told her that he must be suffering horribly too, and because she could not speak she slid her warm fingers into his trembling hand and held it fast.