ing after Selincourt's dismissal," answered her
father.

"How strange that he could not clear himself! Do you expect he had
been gambling really, as well as the other one?" Katherine said
quickly.

"I am sure he had not," replied 'Duke Radford. "He was not that
sort at all. But the thing that bowled him over was that he was
known to have money in his possession, a considerable amount, for
which he could not or would not account."

"Still, I don't see that you were so much to blame," said Katherine
soothingly. "If the man was accused and could not clear himself,
then plainly there was something wrong somewhere: and after all you
simply held your tongue; it was not as if you had stolen anything,
letting the blame fall on him, or had falsely accused him in any
way."

"Just the arguments with which I comforted myself when I kept
silent and profited by the downfall of a man who was blameless,"
'Duke Radford replied. "But though there may be a sort of truth in
them, it is not real truth, and I have been paying the price ever
since of that guilty silence of mine."

"Father, why do you tell me all this now?" cried Katherine
protestingly. Never in her heart would she have quite so much
admiration for her father again, and the knowledge brought keen
suffering with it.

He drew a long breath that was like a sobbing sigh; only too well
did he understand what he had done, but he had counted the cost,
and was not going to shirk the consequences.

"Because I've got the feeling that you will be able in some way to
make the wrong right. I don't know how, and I can't see what can
be done, only somehow the conviction has grown to a certainty in my
mind, and now I can rest about it," he replied slowly.

"Has this trouble made you so restless and ill?" she asked,
thinking that his burden of mental suffering had grown beyond his
powers of endurance since he had been keeping his bed.

"I suppose it may have helped. I have suffered horribly, but since
I made up my mind to tell you, things have seemed easier, and I
have been able to sleep," he answered with a heavy sigh.

"Will you tell me just what you want me to do, if--if----?" she
began, but broke off abruptly, for she could not put in words the
dread which had come into her heart that her father might be dead
before the summer, when Mr. Selincourt was expected in Keewatin.

"If I am alive and well when the summer comes there will be no need
for you to do anything; I