ng my mouth shut. And yet now you have come back home again I
feel a bit of a scoundrel."

"It seems incredible," Fielden exclaimed; "it is a strange discovery for
a pauper to make."

"Well, sir," Raffle said doggedly, "there it is, and this wonderful
chance is entirely in your own hands, pauper or no pauper."

CHAPTER IV

A GREAT TEMPTATION

As yet Fielden could not realize it. The thing was so unexpected he
found it hard to grasp Joe Raffle's meaning. He was too conventional to
have much imagination. He had not thought it possible that fortune could
have devised a method of restoring his old prosperity. But after the
first shock of discovery it seemed feasible. Similar things had happened
before, though, perhaps, not exactly on lines such as these.

And now the position of things as they were at the time he left was
coming back to him. He had a vivid recollection of the night when he
first stood face to face with ruin, when he knew that he had come to the
end of his tether. For Harry Fielden had not drifted into a mess with
his eyes shut. He had known that things were getting desperate and had
staked pretty well everything on a certain race and his horse had lost.
When things came to be settled up there was just enough to pay his
creditors in full. He recalled how he sat down one night with pencil and
paper and worked out the whole thing fairly and squarely. He had had
friends to dinner that evening. It was daybreak before the last hand had
been played and Fielden found himself alone to face the dreaded
disaster.

How clearly it all returned to him now! He had not felt disposed to
sleep, but had gone up to his room in the silent house and refreshed
himself with a bath and changed his clothes, after which he had come
down to the dining-room again. He had thrown back the curtains and
opened the windows to admit the sunshine of a perfect day--the day of
his ruin!

But he had done nothing to be ashamed of. He had not disgraced himself,
and no friend or tradesman was the poorer for his rashness. So leaving
his affairs to the family solicitors, he quietly vanished from the scene
of his folly.

He did not know then--indeed, he did not know fully now--that out of a
sum of money waiting at his banker's his various subscriptions and
racing liabilities were being paid, for it had never occurred to him to
withdraw the various orders he had given to his banker.

Obviously Joe Raffle was speaking the truth as t