ruined nobody but himself and
Duggy. Poor Laura would be quite comfortable on her own money, and would
give him house-room no doubt--till the end.

The end? But he might live another twenty years. The thought was
intolerable. The apathy in which he had been lately living gave way. He
realised, with quickened breath, what this parting from his inheritance
and all the associations of his life would mean. He saw himself as a
tree, dragged violently out of its native earth--rootless and rotten.

Poor Duggy! Duggy was as proud and wilful as himself; with more personal
ambition however, and less of that easy, sensuous recklessness, that
gambler's spirit, which had led his father into such quagmires. Duggy
had shown up well these last weeks. He was not a boy to talk, but in
acts he had been good.

And through the man's remorseful soul there throbbed the one deep,
disinterested affection of his life--his love for his son. He had been
very fond of Laura, but when it came to moments like this she meant
little to him.

He gave himself up to this feeling of love. How strange that it should
both rend and soothe!--that it and it alone brought some comfort, some
spermaceti for the inward bruise, amid all the bitterness connected with
it. Duggy, in his arms, as a little toddling fellow, Duggy at
school--playing for Harrow at Lord's--Duggy at college--

But of that part of his son's life, as he realised with shame, he knew
very little. He had been too entirely absorbed, when it arrived, in the
frantic struggle, first for money, and then for solvency. Duggy had
become in some ways during the last two years a stranger to him--his own
fault! What had he done to help him through his college life--to
"influence him for good," as people said? Nothing. He had been
enormously proud of his son's university distinctions; he had supplied
him lavishly with money; he had concealed from him his own financial
situation till it was hopeless; he had given him the jolliest possible
vacation, and that was all that could be said.

The father groaned within himself. And yet again--how strangely!--did
some fraction of healing virtue flow from his very distress?--from his
remembrance, above all, of how Duggy had tried to help him?--during
these few weeks since he knew?

Ah!--Tidswell Church coming out of the shadows! He remembered how one
winter he had been coming home late on horseback through dark lanes,
when he met the parson of that church, old a