“Well--and I have nothing on my mind,” he said with a happy laugh. He doubled up the cheque and thrust it into Eddy’s hand. “And just come to my room as soon as you get back--or perhaps----” He paused a little, wondering, as he had a favour to confer, which was the best way. “I’ll tell ye what’s the best. I’ll come to yours, and then there will be no difficulty,” Archie said. He went down over the shoulder of the hill to Rosmore, never feeling for a moment the roughness of the way, laughing at himself as he stuck in a bog or stumbled over a rock, elated, happy, twice the man he was when he threaded slowly through the harsh bushes of the ling to where Eddy awaited him. What a half-hour that had been! He had never been able to be of use to any one all his life. The experience was quite new to him, delightful above all words. He did not even remember for some time that it was Rosamond’s brother whom he thus had it in his power to deliver from mysterious and unknown troubles. The first recollection of that additional inducement produced upon him indeed rather a sobering than an exciting effect. He divined instinctively that to Rosamond this would be a horror and humiliation. Heaven forbid she should ever know! He felt nothing but delight in being able to do something for Eddy, but the thought of Rosamond covered him with sudden cold dews of alarm. Never, never, must Rosamond know. She would blame him for it, Archie foresaw. It would raise a mountain of horrible obstacles between them. She would resent the mere possibility of such a link between her brother and himself. He must warn Eddy in the first place, who was so careless, who might let it out at any moment; and in the next, he must take every precaution that no one should ever discover what had passed. Even his cheque might be compromising to Eddy; there must be no way of betraying him, no possibility left. He turned over in his mind, as he hurried home, all the precautions that could be taken to conceal the transaction. Archie was not a man of business. He had little knowledge of the ways of banks and the manner of passing money from one hand to another. But when the heart is concerned, the mind becomes ingenious. And he had thought it well out, and how it was to be done, so that whatever secrets might be revealed, nothing of this should ever come out against Eddy, before he had reached home.