rous earnest overwhelmed me.

He took me for a long walk to break it to me, over the hills towards
Yare and across the great gorse commons by Hazelbrow.

"There are ups and downs in life, George," he said--halfway across that
great open space, and paused against the sky.... "I left out one factor
in the Union Pacific analysis."

"DID you?" I said, struck by the sudden chance in his voice. "But you
don't mean?"

I stopped and turned on him in the narrow sandy rut of pathway and he
stopped likewise.

"I do, George. I DO mean. It's bust me! I'm a bankrupt here and now."

"Then--?"

"The shop's bust too. I shall have to get out of that."

"And me?"

"Oh, you!--YOU'RE all right. You can transfer your apprenticeship,
and--er--well, I'm not the sort of man to be careless with trust funds,
you can be sure. I kept that aspect in mind. There's some of it left
George--trust me!--quite a decent little sum."

"But you and aunt?"

"It isn't QUITE the way we meant to leave Wimblehurst, George; but we
shall have to go. Sale; all the things shoved about and ticketed--lot
a hundred and one. Ugh!... It's been a larky little house in some ways.
The first we had. Furnishing--a spree in its way.... Very happy..." His
face winced at some memory. "Let's go on, George," he said shortly, near
choking, I could see.

I turned my back on him, and did not look round again for a little
while.

"That's how it is, you see, George." I heard him after a time.

When we were back in the high road again he came alongside, and for a
time we walked in silence.

"Don't say anything home yet," he said presently. "Fortunes of War. I
got to pick the proper time with Susan--else she'll get depressed. Not
that she isn't a first-rate brick whatever comes along."

"All right," I said, "I'll be careful"; and it seemed to me for the time
altogether too selfish to bother him with any further inquiries about
his responsibility as my trustee. He gave a little sigh of relief at
my note of assent, and was presently talking quite cheerfully of his
plans.... But he had, I remember, one lapse into moodiness that came and
went suddenly. "Those others!" he said, as though the thought had stung
him for the first time.

"What others?" I asked.

"Damn them!" said he.

"But what others?"

"All those damned stick-in-the-mud-and-die-slowly tradespeople: Ruck,
the butcher, Marbel, the grocer. Snape! Gord! George, HOW they'll grin!"

I thought him over in th