"And what did you do with it?"

"Took it to my father and he told me to use it; that he would settle
with Mr. Slater when he paid his account;--when, too, he would thank him
for helping me out."

"And when he didn't pay it back and these buzzards learned you had quit
your father's house they employed Gadgem to pick your bones."

"Yes--it seems so; but, Uncle George, it's due them!" exclaimed
Harry--"they ought to have their money. I would never have taken a
dollar--or bought a thing if I had not supposed my father would pay for
them." There was no question as to the boy's sense of justice--every
intonation showed it.

"Of course it's due--due by you, too--not your father; that's the worst
of it. And if he refuses to assume it--and he has--it is still to
be paid--every cent of it. The question is how the devil is it to be
paid--and paid quickly. I can't have you pointed out as a spendthrift
and a dodger. No, this has got to be settled at once."

He threw himself into a chair, his mind absorbed in the effort to
find some way out of the difficulty. The state of his own bank account
precluded all relief in that direction. To borrow a dollar from the
Patapsco on any note of hand he could offer was out of the question, the
money stringency having become still more acute. Yet help must be had,
and at once. Again he unfolded the slip and ran his eyes over the items,
his mind in deep thought, then he added in an anxious tone:

"Are you aware, Harry, that this list amounts to several thousand
dollars?"

"Yes--I saw it did. I had no idea it was so much. I never thought
anything about it in fact. My father always paid--paid for anything I
wanted." Neither did the young fellow ever concern himself about the
supply of water in the old well at Moorlands. His experience had been
altogether with the bucket and the gourd: all he had had to do was to
dip in.

Again St. George ruminated. It had been many years since he had been so
disturbed about any matter involving money.

"And have you any money left, Harry?"

"Not much. What I have is in my drawer upstairs."

"Then I'll lend you the money." This came with a certain
spontaneity--quite as if he had said to a companion who had lost his
umbrella--"Take mine!"

"But have you got it, Uncle George?" asked Harry in an anxious tone.

"No--not that I know of," he replied simply, but with no weakening of
his determination to see the boy through, no matter at what cost.

"Well--t