"If you want to know everything, it was the day the cheque arrived that I made a bit," he blurted out. "I’d got a few pounds in my pocket, money I’d borrowed from my friend Despard. He’s staying with us now. If you want corroborative evidence. I went down to the races and backed the winner. I suppose in the excitement of the moment I must have pulled the cheque out of my pocket and lost it on the racecourse." Sir Reginald sighed. It might have been a sigh of satisfaction or of doubt. "Why couldn’t you have told us this before? If, as seems very probable, you lost it at the races, it is easy to conceive that some one picked it up, saw his opportunity, and very cleverly altering the figures took it to the bank next morning." He rose to his feet. "Of course, I shall have to go up to London and put it into the hands of the police. I’m afraid I shall need your help. They are sure to want from you the time you travelled to the racecourse and back, the enclosure you patronised, and so forth. I can rely on your giving me all the help in your power, I am sure." "I have told you I know nothing," Rupert cried, turning on his heel. "I can only tell the police the same thing." He picked up his hat. "Have you finished your examination?" Sir Reginald bowed. "I’m sorry if it has been unpleasant. But I could not help myself. And it would hardly have been fair to you or your father if I had made enquiries behind your back." Rupert nodded, and crossing the room unsteadily opened the door. "Are you coming, father?" he asked the old man, without looking at him. "You can go on, Rupert, I’ll follow presently," Dale replied. Once outside Rupert walked quickly down the drive, past the dark, great clump of fir-trees and along the rough granite-made road until he turned into the main Princetown road and reached Post Bridge. A little way up the hill the lights of the inn twinkled through the darkness. The waters of the East Dart purled beneath him. As they rushed over the rocks the foam glittered in the starshine. A bat swept past his face, its wings humming faintly. He leant his arms on the stone parapet of the bridge and gazed down into the crooning waters. He was innocent, but he knew that up at Post Bridge Hall there was one man who believed him guilty of a despicable crime, and that one man his own father, who, not knowing what to believe, doubted him. His own father, himself the soul of honour, as proud of his good name as was perhaps the greatest man in the land. His father, a man of the soil, whose greatest ambition had been to turn his son into a man of the world, a gentleman, to give him a profession, a start in life, an independence. For that he had made many and great sacrifices, even to the mortgaging of the land he owned and which his forefathers had loved and cultivated. And his only other child being a daughter he had expected her to make many, and perhaps as great, sacrifices also.