that he might be called upon to pay. If you had asked him, out of his wisdom he could have steered you into safe channels. You should have asked him. But you didn't do it. You cast aside his protecting arm, and to-night Clud has you in his clutches. To-night you're waiting to stand trial in a police court. To-night your father's at home eating out his heart in grief and disappointment. Don't you wish now that you had gone to him at the start?"
"Yes," said the boy in a shaky whisper.
"Then you've got to go to him the first chance you get and make a manful confession that you've been a fool. You've got to square things and stand right in his eyes. You've got to make him feel that all through the future he'll be able to depend upon you."
"He . . . he'll think I'm saying it just because. . . ."
"Bert," the Butterfly Man broke in gently, "you don't know much about fathers."
"I guess," the boy faltered, "I don't know much about anything."
"If you know that much," Tom Woods said with a return of his old humor, "you're beginning to know a lot. How old are you?"
Bert told him.
"You're in luck. I was thirty before I realized I didn't know anything, and then there was nobody to go to. My dad was gone. Yours is still here.
