Archie raised his eyebrows. How very "close-fisted" John was becoming! And as a boy at school, and afterwards at college, he had been remarkably open-handed, even as a minor on a very moderate allowance. Archie did not understand it. "I'll buy back my own horse," continued John, trying to swallow down a sense of intense irritation; "and if there is anything else--I suppose there is a new crop by this time--I'll settle them. You must start fair. And I'll go on allowing you three hundred a year, and when you want to marry I'll make a settlement on your wife, but, by ---- I'll never pay another sixpence for your debts as long as I live." Archie smiled faintly, and stretched out his legs. John rarely "cut up rough" like this. He had an uneasy suspicion that the present promptly afforded assistance would hardly compensate for the opening vista of discomfort in the future. And John's tone jarred upon him. There was something fixed in it, and Archie's nebulous easy-going temperament had an invincible repugnance to anything unpliable. He had as little power to move John as a mist has to move a mountain. He had proved on many occasions how little amenable John was to persuasion, and each recurring occasion had filled him with momentary apprehension. He felt distinctly uncomfortable after the two had parted for the night, until a train of reasoning, the logic of which could not be questioned, soothed him into his usual trustful calm. John, he said to himself, had been out of temper. He had eaten something that had disagreed with him. That was why he had flown out. How frightfully cross he himself was when he had indigestion! And he, Archie, would never have grudged John a few pounds now and again if their positions had been reversed. Therefore, it was not likely John would either. And John had always been fond of him. He had nursed him once at college through a tedious illness, unadorned on his side by Christian patience and fortitude. Of course John was fond of him. Everybody was fond of him. It had been an unlucky business about Quicksilver. No wonder John had been annoyed. He would have been annoyed himself in his place. But (oh, all-embracing phrase!) _it would be all right_. He was eased of money difficulties for the moment, and John was not such a bad fellow after all. He would not really "turn against" him. He would be sure to come round in the future, as he had always done with clock-like regularity in the past. Archie slept the sleep of the just, and went off in the best of spirits and the most expensive of light overcoats next morning with a cheque in his pocket.