you.'

'Go to your room,' said his father, hissing from between clenched teeth.
'Go to your room, sir, and be damned to you.'

'I have meant to speak to you,' Polson answered, 'since I had time to
think this night's work over, and after what I heard just now, I mean it
more than ever.'

He entered the room and his father gave way before him. He had forgotten
the evident traces of his recent tears, and stood with his eyelashes
still glistening and his cheeks wet and scalded. But his brows were
drawn level and his jaw was thrust out beneath the tightened lips in a
way which brought out the family likeness with amazing force.

'Well,' said his father. 'Say your say, and go.'

'I shall say my say,' the younger man responded. 'Spain is not the
place. Castle Barfield is the place. The Beacon Hill is the place. This
house is the place.'

'So you have been eavesdropping?'

'You know I haven't,' Polson answered in cold disdain. 'But I'm
not going to follow that red herring. I say Spain's not the
place--unless----'

He choked and stammered and could go no further.

'Unless what?'

'Unless--oh, my God! how can I say it? Unless my father and his cousin
are a brace of rascals.'

'That's pretty language from an only son.'

'Yes. It's pretty language. Give me a chance to take it back, and change
it.'

'Sit down,' said Jervase, pointing to a chair. His son obeyed him, and
he took a seat at the opposite side of the table, leaning both his arms
forward ponderously. 'Now, you and me have got to have this out, I see.'

'Yes,' the young man answered, repressing a sick shudder. 'We must have
it out, father.'

'Very well; I suppose you believe the yarn these chaps have pitched to
Stubbs?'

'What am I to believe?'

'Suppose it's true, what do you think is going to happen?'

'Shame and ruin to us all,' said Polson.

'As for shame--maybe yes--most likely no. As for ruin--that's as I
please.'

'Oh?'

'That's as I please, I tell you. If this here idiot hadn't come bursting
in and yelping out his story as he did, we could have managed some sort
of a compromise quite easy. As it is, we've got our own partner again
us. You can guess what sort of a chance that'd give us in a court of
justice. Now you remember, Polson. This ain't a civil perceeding.
The minute they get them chaps over from Canada and the States it's a
criminal prosecution. D'ye want to see your own father in the dock? I
don't, and so I tell you. He isn't _