tal filled him with dismay; it was equivalent to granting a loan
of ten pounds without any tangible security. No one in their senses
could regard this miserable picture as a security; and the bulbous green
caterpillar seemed to give a wriggle of derision as he looked at it
across the breakfast-table. He had it on his tongue to refuse Mr
Sharnall's request, with the sympathetic but judicial firmness with
which all high-minded persons refuse to lend. There is a tone of sad
resolution particularly applicable to such occasions, which should
convey to the borrower that only motives of great moral altitude
constrain us for the moment to override an earnest desire to part with
our money. If it had not been for considerations of the public weal, we
would most readily have given him ten times as much as was asked.

Westray was about to express sentiments of this nature when he glanced
at the organist's face, and saw written in its folds and wrinkles so
paramount and pathetic an anxiety that his resolution was shaken. He
remembered the quarrel of the night before, and how Mr Sharnall, in
coming to beg his pardon that morning, had humbled himself before a
younger man. He remembered how they had made up their differences;
surely an hour ago he would willingly have paid ten pounds to know that
their differences could be made up. Perhaps, after all, he might agree
to make this loan as a thank-offering for friendship restored. Perhaps,
after all, the picture _was_ a security: someone _had_ offered fifty
pounds for it.

The organist had not followed the change of Westray's mind; he retained
only the first impression of reluctance, and was very anxious--curiously
anxious, it might have seemed, if his only motive in the acquiring of
the picture was to do a kindness to Miss Euphemia.

"It _is_ a large sum, I know," he said in a low voice. "I am very sorry
to ask you to do this. It is not for myself; I never asked a penny for
myself in my life, and never will, till I go to the workhouse. Don't
answer at once, if you don't see your way. Think it over. Take time to
think it over; but do try, Westray, to help in the matter, if you can.
It would be a sad pity to let the picture go out of the house just now."

The eagerness with which he spoke surprised Westray. Could it be that
Mr Sharnall had motives other than mere kindness? Could it be that the
picture _was_ valuable after all? He walked across the room to look
closer at