“But I offered the reward, and the fact is, I must discharge the debt. Reconsider, young man, it is a large sum: many a man starts the world with less.” “A large sum to pay for your son’s life, or for mine, sir?” interrogated Jabez, drawing himself up stiffly; adding, without waiting for reply, “I do not sell such service, sir. You owe me nothing. Let your son thank Miss Ashton for his life; he is her debtor, not mine.” The words seemed to rasp over a nutmeg-grater, they came so hoarsely, as did his request for leave to withdraw; and he closed the door on the five hundred pounds, and on the smiles of husband and wife, before the rebuffed cotton merchant could master his indignation to reply. The notes in his palm were light enough, but lying there they represented liberality contemned; a debt unpaid; an undischarged obligation to an inferior; and not thrice their value in gold could have pressed so heavily on Mr. Aspinall as that last consideration. The frigid manner of Jabez he construed into Radical impudence; he resented the salesman’s repudiation of reward as a personal affront, and did not scruple to express his views openly, then and there, winding up with a question which startled his interlocutors. “What did the singular young man mean by his reference to Miss Ashton?” Had they followed the “singular young man” across the hall to the sanctuary of his own sitting-room, seen him dash himself down into a chair, and bury his head in his hands on the table with unutterable anguish on his face, and heard burst from his lips—more as a groan than embodied thought—“Oh, Augusta, adored Augusta, what a presumptuous madman I have been!”—they would but have had half the answer. But had they mounted the polished oaken stairs to the dainty chamber where Augusta Ashton lay in bed with a “cruel headache,” brought on by the fright, and eyes red with weeping at the catastrophe which had befallen her adorable admirer, the gallant lieutenant, and heard her half-audible lamentations, the answer might have been complete. Mrs. Ashton had heard Augusta’s frantic appeal to Jabez at at the pond, had seen him stagger and turn livid as if shot, noted the inward struggle ere he said, “I will;” but she had ascribed it to old and unforgiven injuries, and thinking it hard that he should be called upon to hazard his life for his known enemy with chances so heavy against him, had herself forbidden the attempt. This was all the solution she had to offer Mr. Aspinall. In the excitement of the accident and the rescue, she had overlooked Augusta’s excessive emotion, but now her mother’s heart took alarm. Could it be that the younger eyes of Jabez had seen a preference for the handsome scapegrace which she had not?