ve me. It was something nature did
for me rather than virtue. I am a rich man, and he is a shepherd,
because something was put into my stomach capable of digesting bad
brandy, which was not put into his.'

'A man has more than one chance. When he found how it was with him, he
should have abstained. A man must pay the fine of his own weakness.'

'Oh, yes. It is all understood somewhere, I suppose, though we don't
understand it. I tell you what it is, Dr. Shand. If you think that five
hundred pounds left with you can be of any assistance, you can have it.'

But the doctor seemed to doubt whether the money would do any good, and
refused to take it, at any rate for the present. What could he do with
it, if he did take it? 'I fear that he must lie upon his bed as he has
made it,' said the doctor sorrowfully. 'It is a complaint which money
cannot cure, but can always exaggerate. If, without costing myself or my
family a shilling, I could put a thousand pounds into his hands
to-morrow, I do not know whether I ought to do it.'

'You will remember my offer.'

The doctor thanked him, and said that he would remember. So the
conversation was ended, and the doctor went about the ordinary
occupation of his life, apparently without any settled grief at his
heart. He had done his duty by his son, and that sufficed,--or almost
sufficed, for him.

Then came the mother's turn. Could anything be sent to the poor lost
one,--to poor Dick? Clothes ran chiefly in her mind. If among them they
could make up a dozen of shirts, would there be any assured means of
getting them conveyed safely to Dick's shepherd-hut out in the
Queensland bush? In answer to this Caldigate would fain have explained,
had it been possible, that Dick would not care much for a dozen new
shirts,--that they would be to him, even if received, almost as little a
source of comfort as would be a ton of Newcastle coals. He had sunk
below shirts by the dozen; almost below single shirts, such as Mrs.
Shand and her daughters would be able to fabricate. Some upper flannel
garment, and something in the nature of trousers, with a belt round his
middle, and an old straw-hat would be all the wardrobe required by him.
Men by dint of misery rise above the need of superfluities. The poor
wretch whom you see rolling himself, as it were, at the corner of the
street within his old tattered filthy coat, trying to extract something
more of life and warmth out of the last glass of gin whic