go will amount
to a good many hundreds, I fear."

"Oh, Dick! I'm sorry, but need all be paid now? You see, the money is
badly wanted for other things."

"Well, mother, I might not come back. I might be killed. And I'd like to
feel that I'd left all straight at home."

"Don't, Dick, don't!" she sobbed, rising and flinging her arms about
him.

She was much overwrought, and her tears fell fast. Dick embraced his
beautiful mother, and kissed her with an affection that was almost
lover-like.

"Mother, I really must pay up everyone before I go. You see, some of them
look upon it as their last chance. They think that, if I once get out of
the country, I shall never come back."

"But I was hoping to help your father. He's getting quite white with
worry. Have you noticed how he has aged lately?"

"I don't wonder at it, mother. Look at the way he works, writing half the
night, tearing all over the town during the day, doing the work of six
men. If you could manage another fifteen hundred for me, mother, I could
go away happy. Don't cry. You see, if I shouldn't come back--you've got
Netty."

"What! Haven't you heard?" she asked. "Don't you know that Netty is going
to leave us? Harry Bent proposed yesterday afternoon at the
Ocklebournes'. He's going away, too--and you may neither of you come
back."

"Hush, hush, mother! We're all leaving somebody behind, and we can't all
come back. Don't let us talk of it. I'll run over and pay the check into
my account, and then draw a little for everybody--something on account to
keep them quiet."

He looked at it--the check--lovingly, and sighed with satisfaction.

"Since grandfather has turned up trumps, mother," Dick suggested, "it
would only be decent of me to go up and thank him, wouldn't it? I've got
to go up and say good-bye, anyway."

"No, Dick don't go," cried the guilty woman, nervously.

"But I must, mother. It won't do to give him any further excuses for
fault-finding."

"If you go, say nothing about the money."

"But--"

"Just to please me, Dick. Thank him for the money he has given you, and
say nothing about the amount. Don't remind him. He might relent, and--and
stop the check or something of that sort."

"All right, mother." And Dick went off to the bank with the check,
feeling that the world was a much-improved place.

On his return, he took a train to Asherton Hall, in order that he might
thank his grandfather. There was no one about when he arrived, an