Rodney did not attempt to feign resentment he did not feel. His quickly-moving wits told him that he was at last brought face to face with a position which he had for some time foreseen, and that for him the best attitude would probably be one of modest humility--at least, to begin with. "I don't think, sir, you are entitled to use such language to me on such slight grounds." "Don't you? You--you--beauty!" Obviously Mr. Patterson had substituted a different word for the one he had intended to use. Taking a slip of paper out of the drawer of the writing-table at which he was seated, he held it out towards Rodney. "You see that?" "I do, sir." "You know what it is?" "It appears to be a cheque." "You know what cheque it is." "If you will allow me to examine it more closely I shall perhaps be able to say." "You can examine it as closely as you please so long as it is in my hands. I wouldn't trust it in your hands for a good deal." "Why do you say that?" "You impudent young blackguard!" "And that, sir?" "I say it, you brazen young hypocrite, because that cheque happens to be a forgery, and you are the man who forged it." "Sir! I know that you are used to allow yourself a large license in the way of language, but this time, although you are my uncle, you go too far." "I intend to go much farther before I've done--and don't you throw the fact that I'm your uncle in my face, the most decent men have blackguards for relatives. This cheque was originally made out for eight pounds. I told you to ask young Metcalf to get cash for it. Between this room and Metcalf's desk you altered it to eighty pounds. It was easily done--especially by an expert like you. He brought you eighty pounds; you gave me eight, and kept seventy-two. You were aware that Metcalf was leaving the office that day to join his brother in Canada; you calculated that probably before the thing was discovered he would be on the high seas, and that, therefore, since everyone knew how much he was in want of cash, I should lay the guilt at his door--you dirty cur! But I didn't, never for one instant; the instant I saw the cheque I recognised your hand." "You recognised my hand? What do you mean by that, sir?" Mr. Patterson took something else out of his writing-table drawer, which, this time, he handed to his nephew. "Look at that." It was a portrait--the photograph of a man in the early prime of life. "Don't you think it might be yours?" Rodney felt that, allowing for the changes made by a few superimposed years, the resemblance to himself was striking, so striking that it was startling. The eyes looked at him out of the portrait with an expression which he recognised as so like his own that it bewildered him. "That's the portrait of your father. You don't remember him?" "Not at all."