"No, I don't suppose you would," agreed Dunbar. "I bet he offered to show you his jewels and his pictures, his collections." "Yes," said Harkness, "he did." "Well, that's just a miracle of good luck for me, that's all. You can help me to-night, help me marvellously. But I don't like to ask you. Things might turn out all wrong and then we'd all be in for a bad time and that wouldn't be fair to you." He paused, thinking, then he went on. "I'll tell you what I'll do. You saw that girl to-night and talked to her, didn't you?" Harkness nodded his head. "You saw that she was a damned fine girl?" Harkness nodded again. "Worth doing a lot for. Well, I'll put the whole story to you--let you have it all. We've got nearly three-quarters of an hour. I can tell you most of it in that time, and then you can make up your mind. If, when I've told you everything, you decide to have nothing whatever to do with it, that's all right. There's no obligation on you at all, of course. But if you _did_ help me, being in the house at that very time, it would make the whole difference. My God, yes!" he ended with a sigh of eagerness, staring at Harkness. Harkness sat there, thinking only of the girl. His own personal history, the town, the dance, Crispin and his son, all these things had faded away from his mind; he saw only her--as she had been when turning her head for a moment she had spoken to him with such marvellous self-control. He loved her just as she stood there granting him permission to help her. His own prayer was that it might not be long before he was allowed to help her again. He was recalled to the immediate moment by Dunbar's voice: "You'll forgive me if I go back to the beginning of things--it's the only way really to explain. Have you ever heard of Polchester, a town in Glebeshire, north of this? There's a rather famous cathedral there." "Yes," said Harkness, "I thought I might go there from here." "Well," Dunbar went on, "out of Polchester about ten miles there's a village--Milton Haxt. I was born there and so was Hesther. Her name was Hesther Tobin, and she was the only daughter of the doctor of the place--she had two brothers younger than herself. We've known one another all our lives." "Wait a moment," Harkness interrupted; "are you and she the same age?" "No. I'm thirty, she's only twenty." "You look younger than that, or you did this afternoon, I'm not so sure now." Indeed the boy seemed to have acquired some new weight and responsibility as he sat there. "No," he went on. "When I said that we'd known one another always I mean that she's always known about me. I used to take her on my knee and toss her up and down. That was where all the trouble began. If she hadn't been always used to me and fancied that I was years older than she--a kind of grandfather--she'd have married me." "Married you!" Harkness brought out.