es him in whose charge
I have left it a rich man. He will bring home the treasure. Like me, he
thinks of it only as a means to an end."

"You will be able to pay the mortgage," my grandfather said, with an air
of immense relief.

Then he seemed to remember something; and he cried out suddenly that
Garret Dawson held an I.O.U. which Uncle Luke had given to Sir Jasper
Tuite for five thousand guineas.

"He said it would hang you," the poor old man went on, sobbing and
stumbling in his speech, "because, of course, it would prove that you
had a motive for shooting Jasper Tuite. He said other things, dreadful
for a father and mother to hear."

"But you did not believe them!" Uncle Luke said. "You did not believe
them! I did owe Jasper Tuite five thousand guineas. It was a card debt.
I should have known better than to play with a man of his reputation;
but I repaid it, every penny. I have his receipt for it. What else,
father?"

"That there was a girl, a girl whom--I should not speak of such things
in Bawn's presence and your mother's--whom you had wronged. She had been
on the stage in Dublin, and she accounted for your extravagance at that
time. He said that Jasper Tuite came between you, tried to save the girl
from you. He said it would be a pretty case to go before a jury, that
you had cause, even more than the money, to hate Jasper Tuite and wish
him out of the way."

"And you believed it?"

I saw Lord St. Leger cower, and I said out of my pity and love for him--

"Uncle Luke, he is old, and you had left him He could not disprove the
things even if he did not believe them."

Uncle Luke's face changed. He looked down at his father.

"We will give him the lie together," he said; and then he noticed the
blood on the white hair and was terrified, till we assured him it was
nothing. "So little Bawn was the price of Garret Dawson's silence," he
said; and then added solemnly that he could never have forgiven himself
if the price had been paid.

At this point the door of the room was opened, and Neil Doherty, bowing
on the threshold, announced that supper was served. And we remembered
that Uncle Luke must be hungry, and his mother reproached herself, while
he remembered for the first time that he had not eaten for many hours.

I don't know how Neil had managed it in the time, but the house was lit
from top to bottom and the servants were standing in a line for us to
pass through, all with happy faces. And Maureen st