his father hotly, "why make the boy lie?"

His son started as if his father had struck him. "I tell you once more,
Mr. Rae, and I tell you all, I know nothing about this cheque, and that
is my last word." And from that position nothing could move him.

"Well," said Mr. Rae, closing the interview, "we have done our best. The
law must take its course."

"Great Heavens!" cried the Captain, springing to his feet. "Do you mean
to tell me, Allan, that you persist in this cursed folly and will give
us no further light? Have you no regard for my name, if not for your
own?" He grasped his son fiercely by the arm.

But his son angrily shook off his grasp. "You," he said, looking his
father full in the face, "you condemned me before you heard a word from
me, and now for my name or for yours I care not a tinker's curse." And
with this he flung himself from the room.

"Follow him," said Mr. Rae to Dunn, quietly; "he will need you. And keep
him in sight; it is important."

"All right, Sir!" said Dunn. "I'll stay with him." And he did.

CHAPTER IV

A QUESTION OF HONOUR

Mr. Rae in forty years' experience had never been so seriously
disturbed. To his intense humiliation he found himself abjectly
appealing to the senior member of the firm of Thomlinson & Shields. Not
that Mr. Thomlinson was obdurate; in the presence of mere obduracy Mr.
Rae might have found relief in the conscious possession of more generous
and humane instincts than those supposed to be characteristic of the
members of his profession. Mr. Thomlinson, however, was anything but
obdurate. He was eager to oblige, but he was helpless. The instructions
he had received were simple but imperative, and he had gone to unusual
lengths in suggesting to Mr. Sheratt, the manager of the Bank, a course
of greater leniency. That gentleman's only reply was a brief order to
proceed with the case.

With Mr. Sheratt, therefore, Mr. Rae proceeded to deal. His first move
was to invite the Bank manager to lunch, in order to discuss some rather
important matters relative to one of the great estates of which Mr. Rae
was supposed to be the guardian. Some fifty years' experience of
Mr. Sheratt as boy and man had let Mr. Rae into a somewhat intimate
knowledge of the workings of that gentleman's mind. Under the mollifying
influences of the finest of old port, Mr. Rae made the discovery that as
with Mr. Thomlinson, so with Mr. Sheratt there was every disposition to
oblige, and ind