Arthur looked up at that, fixing his eyes on Horner's cheerful face with a long, searching gaze. Did Horner know the miserable truth about his father? But of course he did. It was being shouted round the world. And this reference to the money being handy on a voyage to England was no doubt the little artist's indirect, and indeed delicate, way of communicating his knowledge. "O Horner!" he cried. "I am very miserable!" And he bowed his head upon his hands, and wept the first tears he had shed since the blow had fallen on him. There was a kindly arm round his shoulders in a moment. "Why, look 'ere, what's the matter?" And before he knew it he was telling Horner everything. "Well," said Horner, when he finished. "I guess things aren't as bad as you think. They never are, you know." "They couldn't be much worse." "Oh yes, they could," he went on philosophically. "The jury hasn't convicted yet, and perhaps they won't. But that's neither here nor there. The thing you've got to do is to buck up. And look 'ere, about this cheque--you take it all. I don't want it. I'm in funds. And, besides, there's more to come." "No, I can't do that." "Yes, you can, and you will. Call the half of it a loan, if you like, but you've got to take it. You know my motto, 'Englishmen ought to help each other,' and you've just got to let me help you." Once before in his extremity Horner had saved him from starvation; now he saved him from despair. The little artist was not a person of exacting virtues, he made no pretence to religion, and would have appeared a strange sheep indeed in the folds of the elect; but he possessed a simple faith in kindness not always found among persons of immaculate behaviour, and, what is more, he practised his belief. He filled the studio with the echoes of his cheerful laughter, waited on Arthur with a watchful tenderness that was almost womanly, refused encouragement to grief, and finally insisted on a good dinner at Delmonico's, in the pious hope which is common to all Englishmen that the ugliest troubles of the brain are erased by due attention to the stomach. It was Horner who insisted that this should be no second-class voyage on a slow boat; it was he who engaged a berth on a famous liner, drove with Arthur to the dock, and waved a cheerful hand to him as the great ship swung off upon the gray water. When the true apocalyptic books, which record the unknown kindnesses of man, are opened, it is not impossible that the name of this little hare-brained artist may stand higher than the name of kings and conquerors--perhaps also than the names of certain saints, who in their earthly days were less remarkable for warm sympathies than for icy propriety, and a strict attention to the main chance.