, your
politeness, your consideration, your good manners, astound me. I am
positively deprived of the power of speech."

"I'll wait here till it comes to you again, then," the boy declared
bluntly. "I've waited on you hand and foot, done dirty work for you, put
up with your ill-humours and your tyranny, and never grumbled. But there
is a limit! You've made a poor sort of creature of me, but even the
worm turns, you know. When it comes to giving away secrets about the
movements of our navy at a time when we are almost at war, I strike."

"Melodramatic, almost dramatic, but, alas! so inaccurate," Mr. Fentolin
sighed. "Is this a fit of the heroics, boy, or what has come over you?
Have you by any chance--forgotten?"

Mr. Fentolin's voice seemed suddenly to have grown in volume. His eyes
dilated, he himself seemed to have grown in size. Gerald stepped a
little back. He was trembling, but his expression had not changed.

"No, I haven't forgotten. There's a great debt we are doing our best to
pay, but there's such a thing as asking top much, there's such a thing
as drawing the cords to snapping point. I'm speaking for Esther and
mother as well as myself. We have been your slaves; in a way I suppose
we are willing to go on being your slaves. It's the burden that Fate
has placed around our necks, and we'll go through with it. All I want
to point out is that there are limits, and it seems to me that we are up
against them now."

Mr. Fentolin nodded. He had the air of a man who wishes to be
reasonable.

"You are very young, my boy," he said, "very young indeed. Perhaps that
is my fault for not having let you see more of the world. You have got
some very queer ideas into your head. A little too much novel reading
lately, eh? I might treat you differently. I might laugh at you and send
you out of the room. I won't. I'll tell you what you ask. I'll explain
what you find so mysterious. The person to whom I have been speaking is
my stockbroker."

"Your stockbroker!" Gerald exclaimed.

Mr. Fentolin nodded.

"Mr. Bayliss," he continued, "of the firm of Bayliss, Hundercombe &
Dunn, Throgmorton Court. Mr. Bayliss is a man of keen perceptions.
He understands exactly the effect of certain classes of news upon the
market. The message which I have just sent to him is practically common
property. It will be in the Daily Mail to-morrow morning. The only thing
is that I have sent it to him just a few minutes sooner than any one
else c