“Wait! So I began to acquire self-control by teaching myself to be undemonstrative, and I succeeded. But as the time came for me to begin to think of your boarding-school I saw an insurmountable obstacle in the way of keeping my promise to your mother. She had picked out expensive schools that had grown even more expensive. I had no money, but I resolved that you should go, no matter how or where I got the money. My salary would not enable me to do it, so the problem was how to get the money. I couldn't see how I could get it by working harder, and I could not obtain a better position. I knew there was much money in the world, and while brooding on how little I had I decided that if I couldn't get it in any other way I would take it from the bank. I needed very little, and, moreover, it was not for myself. Oh yes,” said the old man, wearily, “I fought against it--fought not so much against my conscience as against my love for your mother and my love for you; and both urged me to disregard my inhibitions. It was love, not envy or greed, that made me decide to take the money from the bank. I did not seek self-extenuation. I rejected cowardly compromises. I did not tell myself that I would borrow the money. I would take it and pay for your education. Beyond that there was no need to think. I feared your mother would not approve, but I did not talk to her about that--only that you would have what she had always wished you to have. But my concern was to insure the payment of your bills for ten years. I did not wish to steal a large sum and run away, because then I could not live in this house where she had lived with me. So I must successfully cover my operations over several years. By not thinking of it as a crime I was able to think exclusively of how to do it without danger of detection.” The old man paused. When he went on it was more calmly. “It was a difficult and complicated problem, one of the hardest that I have ever faced, but in time I found how I could solve it. I went over my solution methodically and painstakingly, checking up every possible contingency, until I knew it was perfect. The accumulated wisdom and experience of generations of experts had gone to providing safeguards, but I saw how human ingenuity, directed by love, could foil human ingenuity when directed merely by the desire to retain possession. And at last, knowing that your education would be fully provided for by my action, I made up my mind to take the money from the bank when the time came.” Mr. Leigh paused. Then, speaking very slowly and deliberately, his eyes fixed unblinkingly on Tommy's, he went on: “And so, my son, that I might keep my promise to her, that you might have what she had wished you to have and what I wished you to have because she had wished it, I lost all sense of right and wrong as men understand it, I sloughed off my inhibitions and forgot the teachings of God--and I stole the money I needed! I was a thief!”