"My dear boy!" exclaimed Patty softly. "My dear boy! Think what it is saving you from! You won't have to go to j---- Oh, I can't say it. But you won't have to, now, will you, Charlie? Say you won't." "No," said he, sighing heavily again, "I guess I won't. But, as far as I am concerned, that is of very little consequence. It is you that I am thinking of. Mother and Sally wouldn't care, except as it would reflect on them, whether I was in jail or not. Of course," he added, with an apparent wish to be fair, "I may be doing them an injustice, but I don't think so. But it is different with you. Aside from the disgrace which I should be bringing down on your head, I think you would feel it, for my sake." "Feel it!" she murmured. "Feel it! Oh, Charlie, dear! I believe I should die. I know it would kill me." Charlie smiled sympathetically. Tears stood in Patty's eyes. "You shall have eight hundred dollars to-morrow morning. I'll get it as soon as the bank is open. And you come here after it. Come early, Charlie. I want you all to myself for a little while." "Thank you, Pat. I am very grateful." She looked longingly at him; a look which he seemed not to see. "Charlie," she said softly. "Yes, Pat?" She hesitated for a moment. "K-kiss me, Charlie." Her voice was so low that he scarcely heard her. "Kiss me, won't you, dear?" And so he did. That was the least he could do. CHAPTER XV The blow had fallen. It had fallen upon Patty. The builder had happened to come upon Dick in the bank; and, being rather pressed for money, he had remarked, half in joke, upon the slowness of the payments from the Hazen estate. Whereat Dick, very much surprised but trying not to show it, had asked for particulars which the builder was very willing to supply; and the matter having been sifted to the bottom, so far as the builder was concerned, Dick had, then and there, given him a check for all that was owing him, which was greatly to the builder's gratification and as it should be. If the matter was sifted to the bottom, so far as the builder was concerned, it was very far from that satisfactory condition so far as Patty was concerned. Dick went to see Patty and asked her, as delicately and gently as was at all consistent with getting the information that he wanted, what had become of the checks which he had sent her, from time to time? Where had the money gone which was intended for the builder? But Patty stood by her guns and would not tell. They might suspect, but they should not know--from her. She insisted that it was her money, that her father had meant it for her, and she would use it as she pleased without being accountable to anybody.