"He got his margin," said Hugh sullenly. "How much margin did he get?" "A thousand." "Where is the rest?" David Stires' voice was like a whip of steel. Hugh hesitated a moment. He had still a few hundreds in pocket, but he did not mention them. "I used most of it. I--had a few debts." "Debts of honor, I presume!" Hugh's sensibility quivered at the fierce, grating irony of the inquiry. "If you'd been more decent with spending-money," he said with a flare of the old effrontery, "I'd have been all right! Ever since I came home you've kept me strapped. I was ashamed to stick up any more of my friends. And of course I couldn't borrow from Jessica." "Ashamed!" exclaimed the old man with harsh sternness. "You are without the decency of shame! If you were capable of feeling it, you would not mention her name now!" Hugh thought he saw a glimmer through the storm-cloud. Jessica was his anchor to windward. What hurt him, would hurt her. He would pull through! "Well," he said, "it's done, and there's no good making such a row about it. She's my wife and she'll stand by me, if nobody else does!" No one had ever seen such a look on David Stires' face as came to it now--a sudden blaze of fury and righteous scorn, that burned it like a brand. "You impudent blackguard! You drag my name in the gutter and then try to trade on my self-respect and Jessica's affection. You thought you would take it up yourself--and I would be none the wiser! And if I did find it out, you counted on my love for the poor deluded girl you have married, to make me condone your criminality--to perjure myself--to admit the signature and shield you from the consequences. You imagine because you are my son, that you can do this thing and all still go on as before! Do you suppose I don't consider Jessica? Do you think because you have fooled and cheated her--and me--and married her, that I will give her now to a caught thief--a common jailbird?" Hugh started. A sickly pallor came to his sallow cheek. That salient chin, that mouth close-gripped--those words, vengeful, vindictive, the utterance of a wrath so mighty in the feeble frame as to seem almost uncouth--smote him with a mastering terror.