Bram’s brain was bursting. His heart was beating fast. He came quickly towards Mr. Biron, and seized him by the wrist. There was no anger in his eyes, nothing but a fierce, hungry hope. For he could not despise Theodore more than he had done before, while the fact of Claire’s shame on meeting himself might now bear a less awful significance then it had seemed to do. “She knew you had taken it? And you forced her to say nothing?” cried he in passionate eagerness. Mr. Biron was disconcerted. “Well, er--I thought that--that perhaps, until I could see my way to paying it back, it would be better----” But Bram did not wait for more explanations. Indeed, he needed no more. He saw in a flash what the shame was which he had seen in Claire’s eyes when she met him after his return. It was the knowledge that her father was a thief, that he had robbed Bram himself, and that she could neither make restitution nor confession for him. And with this knowledge there flashed upon him the question--Was this the only shame she had to conceal? He was ready, passionately anxious, to believe that it was. Mr. Biron was quick to take advantage of this disposition in Bram. His mood of self-abasement seemed to have passed away as rapidly as it had come. Not attempting to draw his hand away from Bram’s grasp, he said buoyantly-- “But I could not let the matter rest. I felt that you might suspect her, my child, of what her father, from mistaken motives perhaps, had done----” Bram cut him short. “Oh, no, I shouldn’t have done that, Mr. Biron,” he said rather dryly. “But you were very welcome to the money. And I am glad to think you enjoyed yourself while it lasted.” This thrust, caused by a sudden remembrance of the hunter and the new clothes in which Theodore had been so smart at his expense, was all the vengeance Bram took. He tore himself away as speedily as possible, and ran off for the doctor with a lighter heart than he had borne for many a day. Might not miracles happen? Might they not? Bram asked himself something like this as he ran through the rain over the sodden ground. When he returned to the farmhouse with the doctor, Bram received a great shock. For, on entering the kitchen, he found Mr. Cornthwaite himself pacing up and down the room, while Joan watched him with anxious eyes from the scullery doorway. Josiah stopped short in his walk when the two men entered. He nodded to Bram, and wished the doctor good-evening as the latter passed through, and went upstairs, followed by Joan. “Will you come through, sir?” said Bram. “There’s a fire in the drawing-room.”