There is always some good in the worst of us. But there are times when it is difficult to find the little spark of goodness; it is so small, so carefully hidden in the unexplored depths of some natures that only the blind faith of the searcher may discover it.

Now, no one had ever been troubled to search for the spark in the Duke of Kilkenty’s nature,—that is, not since the death of his second wife. His stepmother, the Dowager Duchess, had long ago washed her hands of him.

“He always wants the things he can’t have and he never likes the things he can have,” she used to say of him.

Neither of his two marriages had been happy. The second Duchess of Kilkenty, mother of little Arthur, was of humble extraction, it was said. No one knew exactly where she came from, but those who had seen her said she was beautiful. It was rumored that she had been glad to die and had had only one wish: to take her little boy with her.

The Duke of Kilkenty was fond of his eldest son, Lord Maxwell Douglas, but apparently he had not a ray of affection for the delicate, whimsical little Lord Arthur, whom he left entirely to the care of incompetent tutors and a scheming physician.

And now the little Lord Arthur was lost. Detectives all over the kingdom had been searching for him for weeks. Some believed he had been carried off to America; others believed he was dead, and still others forgot all about it, because the English papers, after the first outburst of news, had respected the wishes of the Duke of Kilkenty and the police and had printed little on the subject.

Arthur had dropped out of the world of his father and the people about him so completely that it almost seemed that his poor mother had had her wish at last. He had left not so much as a ripple on the surface when he had plunged out of sight, and it was a false scent that had lured the detectives first to Ireland and then to Scotland.

Was he concealed in one of the thousands of hiding places in the maze of London lodging houses? What had been the motive of his kidnapping? Was it out of revenge or for money? The strangest thing about it all was that the Duke had offered no reward.

One night toward the middle of July this extremely unpopular person lay tossing on his bed. He had paid a flying visit to his estates in Ireland, hoping to find a little rest. For weeks he had slept only a few hours at a time. His soul seemed to be groping in blackness and a dreadful sickening depression benumbed his senses. To-night, like many a night before, he lay thinking and thinking, not of Arthur, but of Arthur’s mother. He seemed to see her face in the darkness. It was beautiful and delicate like the child’s. The Duke closed his eyes, but he could not shut out the vision. It hovered over him appealingly, reproachfully. He tossed and turned, and at last he rose, flung on his dressing-gown and stalked down to the library, carrying a lighted candle and making a ghostly figure in the great room, with the sputtering light held high above his head. He switched on an electric light, unlocked a drawer in his desk and took out a packet of letters tied with a piece of red tape. Among the letters which fell apart when the tape was loosened was a photograph. It was the same face which had hovered about him in the darkness. The reproachful eyes looked straight into his, and there was a pathetic droop at the corners of the mouth.

“Poor little thing,” he muttered to himself. “Poor little Maddelina! Strange that I have never looked at the picture in all these years, not since she died, and I feel as moved by it to-night as I did the first time I saw her.” He fingered the letters absently and opened one or two. They were signed “Your loving Maddelina.”

Among the gray-blue envelopes with foreign postmarks was one of heavy cream-colored paper. There was no address on the back, but it was closed and sealed with sealing-wax, stamped with the ducal arms. He tore open the envelope hastily.

“What’s this?” he exclaimed. “She must have put it here, herself. I don’t remember it.”

He drew out the letter and read the following message, written in the shaky, uncertain hand of one almost too weak to grasp a pen:

“I do not reproach you for myself because I am leaving you forever. But I warn you that if you are not kind to my little boy, you shall not keep him.

“Maddelina.”

At the bottom she had added:

“Why do you wish to be hated and feared? Does it make you any happier?”

He read the note over and over so many times that it seemed to be written in letters of fire on his brain. Then he stood the picture against the inkstand and looked at it with a strange, frightened expression.

“Am I that kind of a man?” he said out loud. “Hated and feared?”

“Of course,” the picture seemed to answer. “There is not one human being who loves you, not even your son, Max, who is much fonder of your half-brother than of you; not a servant; nor a dependent nor an equal. No one. You are alone in the world, a cold, cruel, pitiless man, despised and distrusted.”

“It’s true,” he answered. “Great heavens, Maddelina, it’s true! And what have I gained by it? Nothing. People have always been so afraid of me that if I had tried to be kind to them, they wouldn’t have understood. I know Max is afraid of me, and Arthur is probably happier wherever he is. ‘I shall not keep him.’ What did she mean? Is he dead? No, no, Maddelina, not that,” he cried, starting violently.

“How often do you see him?” demanded the accusing inner voice. “Not half a dozen times a year.”

The Duke of Kilkenty crouched down in his chair.

“I have been so busy,” he muttered.

“Adding to your millions? Crushing and grinding the poor? Finding flaws in old titles and driving people from their homes: cheating and defrauding and overreaching——”

“It’s true, it’s true,” he groaned. “Maddelina, I confess. And all I have gained from it is unspeakable loneliness.”

Resting his chin on his hand he sat and stared at the picture; as the hours dragged slowly by, all the years of his past life passed before him and he saw himself as he really was.

“Oh, Maddelina, is it too late?” he cried brokenly.

“No, no,” answered the voice of Maddelina, speaking from his own heart, “it is not too late, but you must begin at once. To-morrow you can be as much a power for good as you have been for evil. Where people have hated you, they will love you, and where they have cursed you, they will bless you.”

Just as dawn was breaking, he went back to his bedroom, taking with him Maddelina’s picture and her note. He had the bewildered feeling of one who has been walking against the wind and has suddenly turned and faced the other way.

He lay down and slept for some hours and at seven waked with a start.

“Did I dream it?” he asked out loud.

But there was the picture looking at him from the mantel shelf.

He went over and sat down at his writing table near the window. Through the open casement floated the sounds of a summer morning; the chorus of birds; the tinkle of a cowbell in some distant meadow, and the hum of the busy insects. Almost for the first time since his boyhood he noticed with pleasure the green freshness of the outer world. Through the trees he caught a glimpse of gently undulating country, a pleasing vista of wooded hills and dales.

“Am I not beautiful?” it seemed to say, “and how have you neglected me!”

Seizing a pencil he began to write a list. The first item was:

“New model houses for tenants in place of old stone huts.

“New school house——” he paused and frowned. “Why not?” he said presently, and wrote.

“Repairs to church.

“New parish house for Father O’Toole.”

When the list was completed it covered two pages, and the last item was “The O’Connors.”