It was a letter from my brother in Cape Town; poor old ne’er-do-weel Jack, who scarcely ever writes anything more than a picture postcard with a view of the Cape of Good Hope, or something of that kind, unless he’s in trouble and wants something. With a sigh I took out the crackling, scrawled sheet; and my eyes fell on the last sentences first. “_You’ll have to get the money for me, old girl. You know you can if you try. Ask Vandeleur to lend it to us; he’d do anything for you. Haven’t got his address, or I would have written to him myself. I am absolutely on the rocks, so don’t wait. You’ll have to wire a hundred pounds to the Bank here——_” A hundred pounds? Mightn’t he just as well have said “a million”? What was all this about? I took the letter into my own little room and sat down on the camp-bed to read it through.... In five minutes I have grasped all that I can take in at present of the situation; an old one. Jack is in trouble, worse trouble than ever before. Debts; an I O U that was to fall due in six weeks. Threatened exposure of—_something_ that he doesn’t explain. “_A business affair?_” Yes; Mr. Dundonald is quite right. I _have_ “no head for business routine.” My head’s going round with the bewilderment of it. It _can’t_ mean that Jack, my own brother, Father’s only son—one of the _Trants_—has been “not quite straight” with the accounts that are in his care? He must be mad! It must be the hot sun in that awful country. Not _Jack_——! But to suggest that I should turn to Sydney Vandeleur for the money, even supposing that I knew where the Vandeleurs were to be found just now—oh! As if I wouldn’t rather die! Yet there’s nothing else that I can do—— Stop. There is one thing. For, as if flashed in letters of fire over the dim purple sky over the London roofs outside my window, I seem to see the words— “FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS!” And they mean, not only a solution of the difficulties of Miss Trant, typist, not only comforts and security for Cicely, the show-girl out of work, but the saving of our family name and honour from disgrace. Help instead of ruin for that poor dear weak-kneed broken reed of a brother of mine. It’s Providence, that wildly eccentric scheme of the Governor’s. I don’t care what its object may be. I only know that now—_now_—I daren’t refuse to fall in with it. Never mind the details. The main fact is that _I must have that hundred pounds, and this is the only way to it_. * * * * * I’ve just taken supper into our sitting-room, and I’ve been able to smile quite recklessly down into the woe-begone, girlish face under the arnica bandages.