'So you owe him fifteen,' Home said. 'Do you mean to pay him?'

'Not unless I'm forced,' the boy said savagely. He spoke in quite
an open way now. 'I'd rather pay him out than pay him back, the .. .'
Home changed the subject.

Just before they went to bed he recalled their brief journey
together so long ago now. He reached a newish Tennyson down from
his candle-box bookshelf. 'Do you mind saying that piece over
again that piece you said in the train?' Home spoke shyly.

The boy flushed up before he answered. 'I've forgotten it,' he
said.

'Well, read it, then, won't you, please? I've got it here.' The
boy started to read the lines. He read rather badly that night,
so Home thought to himself. He stuck in one place. 'Here, you'd
better go on,' he said hoarsely. So Home finished the poem to the
last line of it:

Until I find the Holy Grail.

'Do you know?' he said, when he had ended, 'I owe you a debt.
You've got a big balance to draw on so far as I'm concerned. I
bucked up a bit, beginning from that day when we met in the
train. I'd been thinking of giving up whisky, and other things,
before that day. But you gave me what I wanted a start. "Now or
never," I said, having seen you coming out so fresh as you did
yes, and heard you recite. I won't describe you as you were then;
you may or may not remember what you were like. That bit in the
poem about riding in lonely places through the dark caught my
fancy. I used to think of you who had gone away in the train
northwards. I thought of you trading on the Mashonaland veld, and
passing unscathed and unafraid over it by night and day you that
had nothing to be ashamed of. Thinking so helped to buck me up.
I've done better since that train journey than I ever did before
out here. Now I'm doing quite well, else it wouldn't be likely
I'd be thinking of going home, as I am.'

The boy looked up at him wretchedly. 'It all went wrong nearly
from the first,' he said, 'so far as I was concerned.'

'Yet all the while you helped me,' Home said. 'So I owe you a
debt, and I mean to pay my debts, whatever you mean to do about
yours. Come on, now. Take this bed. I'm sleeping in the store.'

Thus it came about that in the morning Home, having slept upon
his resolve, brought out some money. He stacked it on the table
impressively. 'I'm glad I slept upon it,' he said. 'I thought
last night that I'd give you the money to go home this year. I'd
made up my mind almost to go next year i