" said Hardie stoutly.

"My money! My money!" cried David fiercely. "No more words. I know you
now. I _saw_ you put it in that safe. You want to steal my children's
money. My money, ye pirate, or I'll strangle you!"

While Hardie unlocked the safe with trembling hands, Dodd stood like a
man petrified; the next moment his teeth gnashed loudly together, and he
fell headlong on the floor in a fit. So the L14,000 remained with the
banker.

Not many days after this a crowd stood in front of the old bank, looking
at the shutters, and a piece of paper announcing a suspension, only for
a month or so.

Many things now came to Alfred Hardie's knowledge till he began to
shudder at his own father, and was troubled with dark, mysterious
surmises, and wandered alone, or sat brooding and dejected. Richard
Hardie's anxiety to know whether David Dodd was to live or die
increased. He was now resolved to fly to the United States with his
booty, and cheat his son with the rest. On his putting a smooth inquiry
to Alfred, his face flushed with shame or anger, and he gave a very
short, obscure reply. So he invited the doctor to dinner, and elicited
the information that David's life indeed was saved, but he was a maniac;
and his sister, a sensible, resolute woman, had signed the certificate,
and he was now in a private asylum.

Mr. Hardie smiled, and sipped his tea luxuriously; he would not have to
go to a foreign land after all. Who would believe a lunatic? He said, "I
presume, Alfred, you are not so far gone as to insist on propagating
insanity by a marriage with Captain Dodd's daughter now?"

Alfred ground his teeth, and replied that his father should be the last
man to congratulate himself on the affliction that had fallen on that
family he aspired to enter, all the more now they had calamities for him
to share.

"More fool you," put in Mr. Hardie calmly.

"For I much fear you are the cause of that calamity."

"I really don't know what you allude to."

The son fixed his eyes on his father, and said, "The fourteen thousand
pounds, sir!"

One unguarded look confirmed Alfred's suspicions; he could not bear to
go on exposing his father, and wandered out, sore perplexed and nobly
wretched, into the night.

_III.--Alfred in Confinement_

At last Alfred decided that justice _must_ be done, and confided his
suspicions to the Dodds. Edward's good commonsense at once settled that,
as the man who married Julia would be the greate