aw a chance of making
money elsewhere, and I wanted a start, and I turned rogue for the
sake of it. Polly, Polly. I'll pay every penny with a three per cent,
interest--compound, mind you--compound--and I shall be a rich man still!

'Pol, you're hard. I don't know where you get it from. But, mind you!
One of these days you might find yourself led into a temptation, and
then perhaps you'll think of your old father. How many business men have
gone through life, and never done but one thing as they had a call to be
ashamed of? I've done one; and I've been bowled out at it! There's men
that does hundreds, Polly, and are never bowled out at all! I'll tell
you what. It ain't me having been dishonourable as stands between us.
It's your own pride, Polly. It's a good pride. It's what you might
call a righteous pride. But if I was just what I am, without being your
father--if I was just what you might call an average old sinner, you
wouldn't let me beg like this, Polly. No, you wouldn't! And look here,
Polly. Money's money, and here's a thousand pound----'

'Damn your thousand pounds,' cried Polson. He turned to face his father
in an agony, and struck his own clenched fist upon his breast three
several times. Then he turned to his original position and stared
through the window across the empty square.

'Yes,' said John Jervase slowly. 'Damn the thousand pounds. Damn it,
and damn it, and damn it over again. You think I'm trying to bribe you,
Polly? No! You wait till you're a father, with your only son a-going to
the wars without a penny in his pocket, and hating you too much to take
what you can give him. Then you'll feel what I feel. Damn the thousand
pounds! Damn all the money as was ever coined. But, Polly, there's my
hand again. I'd rather you took it full--but won't you take it empty?'

The lad took the empty hand and wrung it hard, and held it long.

CHAPTER IX

The time, half-past four o'clock in the morning; the date the twentieth
of September, eighteen hundred and fifty-four; the place the southern
bank of the River Alma. Present, some thirty thousand stalwart British
men, the vast majority of them snoring open-mouthed, and here and
there in the grey of the morning a sentry pacing up and down. Facing
northward, Polson Jer-vase's regiment lies far to the right, and to
the right of it again, at a distance of some half a mile, the men of
Bosquet's command are also sleeping. This is a day destined to be famous
and