fine, and so keep him out of jail. He could not bear
that disgrace, he declared.

But Mr. Bright was unmoved. He sat looking at "Dodd" for a moment in
silence, and then said:

"Not one cent, young man!"

"But I shall have to go to jail," faltered "Dodd," in a broken voice.

"You may go there, and stay there, for all of me," exclaimed Mr.
Bright, in a burst of righteous indignation, as all the past years rose
up before him and the memory of them floated before his vision. "I
have given you the last cent that I ever shall. You deserve to go to
jail, and it is probably the best thing that can happen that you
should."

"But my mother!" pleaded "Dodd."

"It is a fine time for you to plead your mother now, isn't it?" replied
Mr. Bright. "How much you have considered her and her feelings in the
last few years," he continued. "When you have been drunk on the
streets; when you have abused the hospitality of a gentleman; when you
have lied to me and obtained money from me under false pretenses, then
was the time for you to plead for sparing your mother. You did nothing
toward that then. I will not help you now."

Mr. Bright spoke firmly, and in a straight-forward tone. "Dodd" shrank
under his words as though they were lashes on a bare back. But once
more he pleaded:

"I don't know who will help me if you don't, and some one must help me,
for I can't suffer this disgrace."

"Well, no one shall help you if I can prevent it," replied Mr. Bright.
"What you need, young man, is to help yourself. If you haven't virtue
enough left to do this, you might as well go to jail, or into your
grave--it doesn't make much difference which. You are of no manner of
use in this world as you are now. You are worse than useless, you are
a dead load to your friends, your acquaintances, and society."

Mr. Bright laid on tremendously, now that he had begun, and "Dodd"
writhed under his strokes. The last flagellation left them both out of
breath, and there was silence in the room for some minutes. It was Mr.
Bright who spoke first:

"'Dodd,' my boy," he said, "I need not tell you how it pains me thus to
talk to you, you for whom I have striven so hard, and from whom I had
hoped for so much. You are naturally bright, but you are fickle by
nature, and, so far, you have lacked the manhood to correct this fault.
You are the only one who can ever do this. So one else can do it for
you. If ever you stand up like a man, it must be