ture; let them see to
it that it was found; they might hunt there and then if they liked, as
he would not require the room for half an hour."

The consciousness of their innocence in no way sustained Grantly and
Mary under the appalling prospect of losing the party. They had of
course hunted frantically everywhere, but naturally had found no trace
of the shilling.

Ger sat quite still during the recital of their wrong's, his face
growing paler and paler, and his honest grey eyes wider and wider in
the horror of his knowledge. For he knew who had taken the shilling,
and he knew also that it was his plain duty to right his innocent
brother and sister. But at what a cost! He could not tell of Reggie,
and yet it was so unlike Reggie for it was . . . even to himself Ger
hardly liked to confess what it was--and he had gone off in such a
hurry! To Ger, a shilling seemed a very large sum, his own greatest
wealth, amassed after many weeks of hoarding, had once reached five
pence halfpenny, nearly all in farthings; and he even found himself
conjecturing the sort of monetary difficulty into which Reggie had
fallen, and from which a shilling might extricate him. He knew there
were such things as "debts," and that the army was "very expensive,"
for he had heard his grandfather say so. Like many extremely upright
people Ger was gentle in his judgments of others. Himself of the most
crystalline honesty, he could yet conceive of circumstances wherein a
like probity might be hard for somebody else: at all costs poor Reggie
must be screened, but it was equally clear to him that his brother and
sister must not lose the pleasure long looked-forward-to as the opening
joy of the holidays.

Now there was about Ger a certain loyalty and considerateness in his
dealings with others, that had earned for him the _sobriquet_ of
"Gentleman Ger." He was very proud of the title, and his mother, whom
he adored, had done all in her power to foster the feeling of _noblesse
oblige_; so Ger felt that here and now a circumstance had arisen which
would try what stuff he was made of. The excited talk raged round him
like a storm, but after the first he heard none of it. He slipped
quietly off his chair, and unnoticed by the group round his mother,
left the room and crept down the back staircase. All doubt and
questioning was at an end. His duty seemed quite clear to him: he
would take the blame of that shilling, Mary and Grantly would go to
t