Where it’s thought and trouble they’ll do it, and they’d be using strength too if they’d got it, but some of them hasn’t.”

“Hmm,” said Nicholas. He put up his hand to his mouth. “So you gave money you knew would never be repaid, knowing, too, that it meant possible homelessness.”

“You’d have done it yourself if you’d been in my place,” said the man bluntly.

“Should I?” said Nicholas half ironically. “I very much doubt it. Also what right had you to gamble with your wife’s happiness? You knew the risk you ran. You knew the—er, the rule regarding the rents. Job Grantley, you were a fool.”

Again the colour rushed to the man’s face.

“May be, sir. I’ll allow it sounds foolishness, but—oh Lord, sir, where’s the use o’ back-thinking now. I reckon you’d never do a hand’s turn for nobody if you spent your time looking backward and forrard at your jobs.” He stopped, his chin quivering.

“Job Grantley, you were a fool.” Nicholas repeated the words with even deliberation.

The man moved silently towards the window. There was a clumsy dignity about his figure.

“Stop,” said Nicholas. “Job Grantley, you are a fool.”

The man turned round.

“Go to that drawer,” ordered Nicholas, “and bring me a pocket-book you will find there.”

Mechanically the man did as he was bidden. Nicholas took the book.

“Now then,” he said opening it, “how much will put you right?”

The man stared.

“I—oh, sir.”

“How much will put you right?” demanded Nicholas.

“A pound, sir. The month’s rent is due to-morrow.”

Nicholas raised his eyebrows.

“Humph. Not much to stand between you and—hell. I’ve no doubt you did consider it hell. We each have our own interpretation of that cheerful abode.”

He turned the papers carefully.

“Now look here,” he said suddenly, “there’s five pounds. It’s for yourselves, mind. No more indiscriminate bestowal of charity, you understand. You begin your charity at home. Do you follow me?”

The man took the money in a dazed fashion. He was more than half bewildered at the sudden turn in events.

“I’ll repay you faithfully, sir. I’ll——”

“Damn you,” broke in Nicholas softly, “who talked about repayment? Can’t I make a present as well as you, if I like? Besides I owe you something for this ten minutes. They have been interesting. I don’t get too many excitements. That’ll do. I don’t want any thanks. Be off with you. Better go by the window. There might be a need of explanations if you tried a more conventional mode of exit now. That’ll do, that’ll do. Go, man.”

Two minutes later Nicholas was looking again towards the curtains behind which Job Grantley had vanished.

“Now, was I the greater fool?” he said aloud. There was an odd, mocking expression in his eyes.

Ten minutes later he pressed the electric button attached to the arm of his chair. His eyes were on his watch which he held in his hand. As the library door opened, he replaced it in his pocket.

“Right to the second,” he laughed. “Ah, Jessop.”

The man who entered was about fifty years of age, or thereabouts, grey-haired, clean-shaven. His face was cast in the rigid lines peculiar to his calling. Possibly they relaxed when with his own kind, but one could not feel certain of the fact.

“Ah, Jessop, do you know Job Grantley by sight?”

For one brief second Jessop stared, amazement fallen upon him. Then the mask of impenetrability was on again.

“Job Grantley, yes, sir.”

“What is he like?”

“Tallish man, sir; wears corduroys. Dark hair and eyes; looks straight at you, sir.”

“Hmm. Very good. Perhaps I wasn’t a fool,” he was thinking.

“Do you know Mr. Curtis?” he demanded.

“Yes, sir.” This came very shortly.

“Should you call him—er, a hard man?” asked Nicholas smoothly.

Again amazement fell on Jessop’s soul, revealing itself momentarily in his features. And again the amazement was concealed.

“He’s a good business man, sir,” came the cautious reply.

“You mean—?” suggested Nicholas.

“A good business man isn’t ordinarily what you’d call tender-like,” said Jessop grimly.

Nicholas flashed a glance of amusement at him.

“I suppose not,” he replied dryly.

There was a pause.

“Do the tenants ever ask to see me?” demanded Nicholas.

“They used to, sir. Now they save their shoe-leather coming up the drive.”

“Ah, you told them—?”

“Your orders, sir. You saw no one.”

“I see.” Nicholas’s fingers were beating a light tattoo on the arm of his chair. “Well, those are my orders. That will do. You needn’t come again till I ring.”

Jessop turned towards the door.

“Oh, by the way,” Nicholas’s voice arrested him on the threshold, “I fancy the middle window is unlatched.”

Jessop returned and went behind the curtains.

“It was, wasn’t it?” asked Nicholas as he emerged.

“Yes, sir.”

Jessop left the room.

“Now how on earth did he know that?” he queried as he walked across the hall.

The curtains had been drawn when Nicholas had been carried into the room. The knowledge, for a man unable to move from his chair, seemed little short of uncanny.

“A man can face odds if he is a man, and remake his life.”

The words repeated themselves in Nicholas’s brain. Each syllable was like the incisive tap of a hammer. They fell on a wound lately dealt.

A little scene, barely ten days old, reconstructed itself in his memory. The stage was the one he now occupied; the position the same. But another actor was present, a big rugged man, clad in a shabby overcoat,—a man with keen eyes, a grim mouth, and flexible sensitive hands.

“I regret to tell you that, humanly speaking, you have no more than a year to live.”

The man had looked past him as he spoke the words. He had had his back to the light, but Nicholas had seen something almost inscrutable in his expression.

Nicholas’s voice had followed close upon the words, politely ironical.

“Personally I should have considered it a matter for congratulation rather than regret,” he had suggested.

There had been the fraction of a pause. Then the man’s voice had broken the silence.

“Do you?”

“I do. What has my life been for fifteen years?” Nicholas had demanded.

“What you have made of it,” had been the answer.

“What God or the devil has made of it, aided by Baccarat—poor beast,” Nicholas had retorted savagely.

“The devil, possibly,” the man had replied, “but aided and abetted by yourself.”

“Confound you, what are you talking about?” Nicholas had cried.

The man had still looked towards the book-cases.

“Listen,” he had said. “For fifteen years you have lived the life of a recluse—a useless recluse, mind you. And why? Because of pride,—sheer pride. Those who had known you in the strength of your manhood, those who had known you as Nick the dare-devil, should never see the broken cripple. Pride forbade it. You preferred to run to cover, to lie hidden there like a wounded beast, rather than face, like a man, the odds that were against you,—heavy odds, I’ll allow.”

Nicholas’s eyes had blazed.

“How dare you!” he had shouted.

“You’ve a year left,” went on the man calmly. “I should advise you to see