And he had told her that he had no money! Poor bewildered Kate picked up the bill and sat staring at it with wide-spread eyes, her thoughts chaos. Had he been lying to her all along? Was there money in his pockets all these months through which she had slaved to help him keep their little home together? Deep into her unwilling heart sank a shaft of distrust, the first it had ever felt. Then for shame she tried to withdraw the shaft, to ease the pain it had caused, but with all her tugging the thought went deeper, beyond control, becoming rooted, settled in that long unblemished home of fidelity, love and trustfulness. A hundred excuses came to his defence, but her bewildered brain could not complete them; they became chaotic conflicts between devotion and suspicion. No sooner did she see her way clear than it was blocked again. There was the bill! It had fallen from his pocket--more money than she had known him to possess in months. And with that bill in his pocket he had wilfully told her that he had no money, not even a cent. Distrust grew stronger, faith faded away, resentment flooded the heart of the loving little woman, and the years of happy misery she had spent with him became the memory of deception and neglect. Tears welled up in the glittering eyes; then her teeth came firmly together as if to suppress the emotion with which she found herself struggling. The bitterness of reproach came to her as she turned toward the bed on which frolicked the husband and the child. The child! He played, toyed with the little one, whose every want he had forgotten, with money in his selfish pockets. His wife found herself beginning to hate, to despise him. But words refused to come, the reproach was unuttered, for a sudden thought intervened. The thought was mother to a resolution and Digby Trotter was spared.