black, your hair is black, and you are like me. They christened you in the workhouse, unknown to me. The chaplain gave you a name. If I had had the choosing of it, I should have called you Ishmael or Esau, but they called you Paul. They wanted me to tell them my surname, but I would not—I could not—so they called you Stepaside, the name of the little hamlet where I fell down, as I thought, to die."

"Well, I know everything after that," he replied.

"Very nearly," was her answer. "You were brought up in the workhouse, while I, as soon as I was strong enough, had to go away into service. On the whole, I suppose, they did as well as one could expect for you. They gave you good schooling, and taught you a trade, and now you are beginning to earn your own living."

"Yes, mother," he replied. "I have got a job as a blacksmith in the Pencarrow Mines. Soon I shall be getting a pound a week, and later on you must come and live with me."

She shook her head. "No, Paul. While I am not with you, people will not insult you. Now that you are away from the place where you were born and reared, no one knows your history. No one knows that you were born in a workhouse and that your mother does not know where your father is."

"But you were married, mother?"

"Yes," she cried eagerly, "and that is why I have told you everything to-day. When you were seventeen, I said to myself, 'Directly I can get to him we will meet, and I will tell him, tell him with my own lips.' Paul, that man has covered your mother with black shame. If he is alive you must find him. The day he wrote me that letter he killed all the love I had for him. The last feeling I had, when I lay down and thought I was going to die on the roadside, was a feeling of hatred for him. When I first saw you, although my heart went out to you with a great love, I hated your father. For seventeen long years I have hated him, and I hate him still."

She looked like a savage, and there was a snarl in her voice as she spoke. "But for him, but for him——" And then she stopped. "Paul, find him out, wherever he is. Find him out!"

The passion which burned in the mother's eyes passed into those of the youth. She need not have told him what was in her heart. Paul Stepaside hated his father from that day.

"Yes, I will," he said grimly. "I will find him. An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth; disgrace for disgrace; misery for misery. Mother, all you have suffered he shall suffer, and a thousand times more. Wherever he is, whatever he is, I will find him." His eyes turned away towards the dreary moors. Router and Brown Willy stood like grim sentinels watching over the scene. A slight wind had arisen, which soughed its way across the great silent spaces, dispelling the mists. The black tors in the near distance became visible again; frogs croaked in the marshes near by.

"But tell me more, mother. I know nothing yet. Who is he? What is he? Tell me all you know of him."

"There is little I can tell," said the mother. "He told me his name was Douglas Graham. I believe that to be true. I found out that from the people at 'Highlands,' the big house close by my father's farm."

"Ah, they can tell us," he cried.

"Nay," replied the mother. "They only had the house for a short time, and then left. They are gone, I know not whither, and I, fool that I was, was too ignorant to find out in those days more about him. But he was called Douglas Graham, there is no doubt about that."

"And is that all?"

"Only this," replied the mother, "he is a lawyer—what they call an English barrister. I have heard that books are kept, containing a list of such people. I expect they'll be in London; but these barrister men go around the country, some of them. Anyhow, that is for you to find out."

He nodded his head. "Yes, I will find out," he said; "but the thing will be difficult, mother. I see what you mean now, and why you cannot live with me. I must go to London, or to one of the other big places where I can find out the truth about such things. Oh, I shall know, and I will not spare him. Don't be afraid, mother, you shall be avenged for all he's done to you."

A kind of evil joy flashed from the woman's eyes. "Yes, Paul," she said presently, "and you are clever, you were the cleverest lad in the workhouse school. I found out that. You were always ahead with your lessons, and you are quick with your brains and you are strong. But remember, he is clever and strong too, and he has much book-learning, and he knows all about the law, English law especially. You must be able to meet him on equal terms. You must learn, my boy—you must know everything. You need not fear for me. I have a place now where I can live comfortably; but remember, I shall never be happy until either he sets me and you right before the world, or I have made him suffer all I have suffered and all you have suffered."

For half an hour more they stood talking, he asking questions, she answering and explaining. Night had fallen now, but the moon had risen and made darkness impossible. The mists had cleared away, too, and patches of blue were to be seen in the sky. Here and there a star peeped out.

"Good night, Paul," she said at length. "You will write me often, won't you? Remember, you are the only thing I love on earth."

"You know what I will do," he replied. "Good night, mother."

For a few seconds he held her like a man might hold the maid he loved, and then, turning, he walked slowly back towards Bodmin, from which town he intended to take the train to the place where he lived. Mile after mile he walked, seeming to take no notice of his surroundings. It might be day, it might be night; it might be summer, it might be winter, for all he cared. The iron had entered his soul, the poison of hatred had filled his heart. He loved his mother with a kind of savage, passionate love, but the man who was his father he hated, and on him he swore to be revenged. "That is my work in life," he said to himself; "that is the purpose for which I shall live, and I will do it—yes, I will do it."

CHAPTER II

PAUL BEGINS HIS WORK

In some senses Paul Stepaside had suffered but little because of his being a pauper. His education was quite equal to that of the lads who had gone to the elementary school in the district. He had passed what was called the sixth standard, and although this meant very little more than a knowledge of the three "r's," he was considered by the workhouse schoolmaster as his cleverest pupil. After leaving school at the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to a local blacksmith, with whom it was arranged he should remain for four years. John Tresidder, the blacksmith, however, died two years after Paul's apprenticeship, and so at sixteen, with his trade half learned, he found himself homeless and friendless. But that did not trouble him much. He knew, or, at least, he thought he knew, practically all that Tresidder could teach him, and he was eager to start life on his own account. During the two years he had been an apprentice, moreover, he had attended a night-school, and had studied subjects which were beyond the range of the curriculum in the ordinary day-schools. He had some knowledge of geometry, and had mastered the first book of Euclid. He also knew a little of history, and the schoolmaster, having some acquaintance with chemistry, and finding Paul an apt pupil, had given him some lessons in that science. Being a strong, healthy lad, he had no difficulty in finding work in the blacksmith's shop at the Pencarrow Mines, where he was called an Improver. He had been working here for a year, and, as he had told his mother, his wages had just been raised to one pound a week.

Paul was not popular among his companions. The Cornish people are extremely proud, and have a proper scorn for those who have been reared on charity. Moreover, a shadow rested upon his name, and he was often insulted as a