eir ever finding out
that everything had been on the verge of going to pieces. You see the
man had put it up to father very eloquently that his wife was very
ill in the hospital and, if anything should happen to him and he were
arrested it could not be kept from her and she would die. It's true
she was very critically ill, had just been through a severe operation,
and was very frail indeed. Father felt it was up to him to shoulder
the whole responsibility, although, of course, he felt that the man
richly deserved the law to the full. Nevertheless, because of his
promise he stood by him.

"That night the man was killed in an automobile accident soon after
leaving our house, and when it developed that the business was
built on a rotten foundation, and that father was in partnership--you
see the man had been very wily and had his papers all fixed up so
that it looked as if father had been a silent partner from the
beginning--everything came back on father, and he found there were
overwhelming debts that he had not been told about, although he
supposed he had sifted the business to the foundation and understood
it all before he made the agreement to help him. Perhaps if the man
had lived he would have been able to carry his crooked dealings
through and save the whole thing, with what help father had given
him, and neither father nor the world would ever have found out--I
don't know.--But anyway, his dying just then made the whole thing
fall in ruins, and right on top of father. But even that we could
have stood. We didn't care so much about money. Father was well off,
and he found that if he put in everything he could satisfy the
creditors, and pay off everything, and he had courage enough to be
planning to start all over again. But suddenly it turned out that
there had been a check forged for a large amount and it all looked
as if father had done it. I can't go into the details now, but we
were suddenly face to face with the fact that there was no evidence
to prove that he had not been a hypocrite all these years except his
own life. We thought for a few days that of course that would put
him beyond suspicion--but do you know, the world is very hard. One
of father's best friends--one he thought was a friend--came to him
and offered to go bail for him for my sake if he would just tell
him the whole truth and own up. There was only one way and that was
to go to the man's wife and try to get certain papers which father
knew