"At any rate it is best
that you should hear the story, for when men like us have passed away
the children may be here to remember what others will be glad to forget
about me--to forget that I tried to undo the wrong I had done to those
lost to me now."
Major Dale opened the door to the sitting room, and there the man
continued his story.
"As a boy I was cared for by an over-indulgent aunt, and I have often
thought that the fact of having lost my own mother might, in some way,
make an excuse to heaven for me, for the boy or girl who never knows a
mother has suffered more than mortal can count,--in ways more numerous
than mortal can see, and a motherless babe is the saddest story in all
human history. Well, money had been left for me, and this too, I
believe, was an inherited wrong, for too early in life had I begun to
feel independent. Later that indifference to discipline grew to
recklessness, and then the final evil came in the shape of bad company."
Major Dale stopped the speaker for a moment and Dorothy was glad to move
a little nearer her father. Somehow, this strange story was unlike
anything she had ever heard, and while it fascinated her, it also
frightened her, for she had not before known anyone who had lived such a
wild life.
"And here is where your daughter, Major Dale, has come so strangely into
my life," went on Mr.
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