In the morning came the lecture. "No end of a jawing! I pitched it in hot and strong, I can tell you," Sidney subsequently reported to Marie. Poor Raymond lay in bed with a racking headache and trembling hands, and heard his sins rehearsed and (worse still) his feebleness exhibited. "You're not the chap for this kind of thing," Sidney told him. "Chuck it, my boy! Seek milder delights. Oh, I know it's a bit my fault in the beginning. But I thought you'd a head on your shoulders and some sense in it. I'm not against a bust now and then; but this sort of rot----! And what's this fool's business about a ring and a bangle? You're in a pretty tight place there, young fellow." Almost amid sobs the story of these unfortunate articles of jewellery--bought on credit and pawned, by and with the advice and consent of the donee, a few days later--came out. Sidney brandished the terrors of the law; the figure of the justly irate tradesman took on terrifying proportions. If only that dread apparition, with its suggestion of policemen, of locked doors and bolts shot home, of Black Maria and picking oakum--if only that apparition could be exorcised, there was nothing Raymond would not do, promise, and abjure. Sidney jeered while he threatened and grinned while he preached, but he did both to good purpose, with all the convincing knowledge and experience of a reformed criminal at a revivalist meeting, with all the zeal of a doctor whose reputation is staked upon a cure. Then the thorough-going long-headed man went off to his own employers and arranged to begin his approaching summer holiday immediately. That done, he tackled the writ-bearers and the fearful apparition with the aid of a sharp lawyer of his acquaintance. With threats of giving as much trouble as possible in one hand, and promises of a composition in "spot cash" in the other, the lawyer and he succeeded in reducing the claims to manageable proportions; the pawnbroker, himself a little uneasy under the lawyer's searching questions, accepted a compromise. Things could be arranged--at a price. But the pain of that price to old Sarradet's thrifty soul! To have to subtract from his hoards instead of adding to them, sell stock instead of buying, to count himself so much the poorer instead of so much the richer--the old merchant hated it. It was Marie's task to wring the money out of him. And even when he had been brought to the point of ransoming his son, he ceased not to bewail the prospects of his beloved business. "I won't leave it to him, I won't," he declared querulously. "I'll leave it to you, Marie." "Oh, but I couldn't possibly manage the business, Pops," she protested, half in dismay, half laughing at the idea. "Then you must get a husband who can." "Never mind my husband just now. There are more pressing things than that."