may be. If you can't see
your way to help me, the end is obvious and close at hand. I have, I
think, something under two pounds in my pocket. If I'd waited to get
more I should not be here. The end came unexpectedly. Old Coxley
called for some securities which I had--which I couldn't give him at
the moment, and I had to go at once or not at all."

Charles stood up. He would have liked to tell him all he felt about
the matter. How the tampering with securities hit him more hardly than
almost anything could have done, since straight dealing in such
matters is the very first of Stock Exchange tenets. How, if he had
come to him, he would have strained himself to the utmost to set
things right.

But, facile talker as he was on matters that were of no account, he
found himself strangely tongue-tied here.

"Well?" he asked. "Will you let me help you?"

"As you will, my boy ... If you do, it offers me a chance--my only
chance. If you don't----" he shrugged his heavy shoulders meaningly.

"Do what I ask," urged Charles. "It is the only possible amends you
can make."

Mr. Pixley shook his head. "It is out of the question. I could do
nothing with three hundred a year----"

"You could live quietly on that in many places."

"I don't want simply to live. I want to work and redeem myself."

"You have worked hard enough and long enough," said Charles; and he
might have added, as was in his mind, "And it has all ended in this."

"I would like to help you," he said, as he moved slowly towards the
door, striving hard to keep the stiff upper lip Graeme had enjoined on
him. "But I don't think you should expect me to do what I know to be
wrong. I'll do what I said----"

Mr. Pixley shook his head. His face was gray, his lips pinched in.
Charles went out and closed the door behind him.

But he could not leave him so. He had known from the first that he
would have to help him, right or wrong.

He opened the door again quietly and went in. His father was sitting
at the table with his head in his hands. Charles laid down the money
he had, with Graeme's assistance, prepared, laid his hand on his
shoulder for a moment, and went quietly out again, and out of the
house.

It was a miserable business altogether. He never forgot that last
sight of him sitting at the mean little table in the mean little room
with his head in his hands.

XI

Charles went soberly down the green slopes towards the sea, and
presently discovered the d