Co. in London.
Are you a-going to take that, or are you not?'

'I'm not likely,' said Polson, 'to have any sort of use for money.'

'You're hard,' said his father. 'You're bitter hard. There's the 'and
refused. There's the commission chucked, and there's the check too dirty
for you to look at. Very well. Now there's fifty notes for twenty pounds
a-piece. Will you take them?'

'No,' said the youngster, 'I shall have no want of money and no use for
it.'

'You're hard,' said Jervase. 'You're bitter hard. Will you take one of
them? It might come in useful. Take it, Polly. Just take it, even if you
never spend it.' He clutched one note from the heap which lay upon the
table, and held it in a shaking hand towards his son. And Polson still
stood like a statue, and stared out of the window. He would fain have
been more relenting had he dared, but he feared the loss of his own
manhood if he once began to pardon, and perhaps he was severer to
himself than to the old man who begged for his forgiveness. 'There's the
'and,' said Jervase, weeping openly. 'He won't touch that. There's
the commission only waiting for him to sign, and he won't touch that.
There's a cheque for a thousand pound as would send him to the war
fitted out like a gentleman, and he won't touch that. There's the ready
money to the same amount as would help him to hold his head up among his
comrades anywhere, and he won't touch that. And here's a note for a mere
twenty pounds, and his father asks him just to take it as a sort of a
memorial, and to keep it like as if it was a funeral card, and he won't
touch that.'

Polson was white to the lips, but he looked straight before him still,
and gave no sign. Jervase took up the agent's letter and deliberately
tore it into pieces. He took up his own cheque and tore that into pieces
also. He patted the pile of notes together and put them into his breast
pocket, crying all the while with odd little child-like snatches of
sound which were wounding to listen to.

The bugles sang out again in the square, and the distant hoofs were
clattering on the cobbled stones in front of the stables. Through the
window Polson could see the glitter of the polished brass of the band,
as it moved slowly across the square towards the barrack gate, and
formed up in a solid cube. There was a crowd outside in the streets, and
from it rose a noise of cheering. There was silence in the room except
for those child-like, unrestrained sobs wh