ng to run away."

"Did you expect there was a chance of that?" asked Matt, quietly.

"Expect!" his father blustered. "I don't know what I expected. I might
have expected anything of him but common honesty. The position I took at
the meeting was that our only hope was to give him a chance. He made all
sorts of professions of ability to meet the loss. I didn't believe him,
but I thought that he might partially meet it, and that nothing was to
be gained by proceeding against him. You can't get blood out of a
turnip, even by crushing the turnip."

"That seems sound," said the son, with his reasonable smile.

"I didn't spare him, but I got the others to spare him. I told him he
was a thief."

"Oh!" said Matt.

"Why, wasn't he?" returned his father, angrily.

"Yes, yes. I suppose he might be called so." Matt admitted it with an
air of having his reservations, which vexed his father still more.

"Very well, sir!" he roared. "Then I called him so; and I think that it
will do him good to know it." Hilary did not repeat all of the violent
things he had said to Northwick, though he had meant to do so, being
rather proud of them; the tone of his son's voice somehow stopped him
for the moment. "I brought them round to my position, and we gave him
the chance he asked for."

"It was really the only thing you could do."

"Of course it was! It was the only business-like thing, though it won't
seem so when it comes out that he's gone to Canada. I told him I thought
the best thing for him would be a good, thorough, railroad accident on
his way home; and that if it were not for his family, for his daughter
who's been in and out here so much with Louise, I would like to see him
handcuffed, and going down the street with a couple of constables."

Matt made no comment upon this, perhaps because he saw no use in
criticising his father, and perhaps because his mind was more upon the
point he mentioned. "It will be hard for that pretty creature."

"It will be hard for a number of creatures, pretty and plain," said his
father. "It won't break any of us; but it will shake some of us up
abominably. I don't know but it may send one or two people to the wall,
for the time being."

"Ah, but that isn't the same thing at all. That's suffering; it isn't
shame. It isn't the misery that the sin of your father has brought on
you."

"Well, of course not!" said Hilary, impatiently granting it. "But Miss
Northwick always seemed to me a tolerab