.

Once, but only once, there had been a clerk at Putnam's.

The old man was not to be convinced.

"Take a tidy-sized clurk to go off with five million in his pocket," he
said. "Course I don't say he couldn't do it, Gob 'elpin' 'im. Only he'd
be carryin' a lot o' dead weight, as the Psalmist said. _Too_ 'eavily
penalised, I should say. No, my dear, 'tain't the clurk. 'Tis the
li'bilities."

"What are the liabilities?" asked Boy.

"They're the devil, my dear," said the old man. "That's all I can tell
you. Land you in the lock-up soon as look at you."

Later that evening the girl went to call on her friend, Mr. Haggard.

He was in his study among his books, and rose to greet her with that
affectionate kindliness he reserved for her.

"I want to know something, Mr. Haggard," said the girl in her determined
way.

He looked at her over his spectacles.

"Yes."

"Can they put you in prison if you lose your money?"

"Not if you lose it honestly," replied the vicar.

One reason the girl liked him so much was that he never played the fool.
The heavy horse-chaff with which the average Englishman of the Duke's
type, in his elephantine efforts at gallantry, thinks it necessary to
adorn his conversation, were not for him.

"Oh, he'll lose it honestly all right," cried the girl eagerly,
unconscious of the fact that she was giving herself away, or careless of
it.

It was not hard for the other to gauge her mind. Casually he turned over
an evening paper.

"I see there's good news about Mr. Silver's Bank," he said. "It's
weathered the storm."

He pointed out to her a paragraph in the stop-press column.

CHAPTER XXIV

The Man with the Gamp

The good news was confirmed.

That night a telegram came from Mr. Silver to say he was coming down
next morning and asking them to meet him at Lewes.

"I knew he'd come if he could to-morrow," cried the girl.

Her mother looked at her.

"It's your birthday, Boy," she said.

The girl's fair face flushed.

"He doesn't know that," she said, on the defensive. "And you're not to
tell. It's the last day of hunting. That's what I meant."

She was indeed seventeen next day. And the sign of her womanhood was
that when she came down in the morning her hair was bunched in a neat
little coil at the back of her head. Because of it she was shy and
somewhat defiant. Dressed for hunting in snowy shirt and long-skirted
dark coat, she entered the parlour more swiftly than her