"Is it going wrong?" He laughed again. "I don't know," he said, and began to chuckle at himself. "That's the trouble. I can't get the hang of it. There's a screw loose somewhere. I'm like a man steering a ship who knows nothing about navigation." "It's all right if you do your best," said the girl, with the little preacher touch she inherited from her grand-dad. That note always caused an imp of mischief to bob up in the young man's heart. "Hope so, de we," he said. She looked at him sharply. _She_ might censure her father, but she allowed that liberty to no one else. "What!" she said. Jim Silver took to instant flight. "None-nothing," he stammered. "Only I'm afraid the pup-passengers won't think it's all right when they find themselves going to the bottom. They'll say, 'What business had you at the wheel if you can't steer?' And they'll be right, too." * * * * * With the New Year the young man came no more for week-ends, and the reason was well known. The hunting-field is always a great place for gossip, for except at rare intervals there is little else to do. And with the Duke's hounds the gossip was about Mr. Silver. The Union Bank of Brazil and Uruguay was known to be in difficulties, and Boy hunted alone. "Where's your Life Guardsman?" asked the Duke. "Guarding the Bank, I believe, your Grace." The Duke grunted. "Wants guarding from what I can hear of it," he blurted. "Tell him it's no good," he shouted. "Tell him to come out of it. It's no job for an honest man." "What isn't?" "Bankin'." He muttered to himself. "There's only one thing an honest man can do, that's land. Everything else you get dirty over. I'm not overclean myself, but I'm not as dirty as some of 'em." Then there appeared paragraphs in the paper. The girl asked her father about them. He shook his head. "I don't understand it, my dear," he said. "And what's more, I don't believe Mr. Silver do himself. I see the accounts published in the paper. Accordin' to them the Bank had five millions in cash. You'd think you couldn't go very fur wrong with five millions in cash in the till." "Perhaps a clerk's been taking some," said the girl eagerly. Once, but only once, there had been a clerk at Putnam's. The old man was not to be convinced. "Take a tidy-sized clurk to go off with five million in his pocket," he said. "Course I don't say he couldn't do it, Gob 'elpin' 'im. Only he'd be carryin' a lot o' dead weight, as the Psalmist said. _Too_ 'eavily penalised, I should say. No, my dear, 'tain't the clurk. 'Tis the li'bilities." "What are the liabilities?" asked Boy. "They're the devil, my dear," said the old man. "That's all I can tell you. Land you in the lock-up soon as look at you." Later that evening the girl went to call on her friend, Mr. Haggard. He was in his study among his books, and rose to greet her with that affectionate kindliness he reserved for her.