His wife's arguments seemed unanswerable. Indeed, whenever she was near, he hopelessly surrendered himself to her guidance. He knew perfectly well that the only proper course for a man of God was to go forth into the market-place and proclaim his son's innocence, to the shame of his wife, of himself, and of his daughter. It was not a question of precise justice. It was a plain issue between God and the devil. But Mary had pursued the policy of throwing dust in his eyes, and led him blindly along the road where he was bound to sink deeper and deeper into the mire. When the love of wife conflicts with the love of child, a father is between the horns of a dilemma. The woman was living; the boy dead. The arguments were overpoweringly plausible. Mrs. Swinton had her life to live through; whereas Dick's trials were ended. And would a suspicious world believe he shared his wife's plunder without knowing how it was obtained? In addition, Netty's future would certainly be overshadowed to a cruel extent. The arguments of the woman were, indeed, unanswerable: the misery of it was that the whole thing resolved itself into a simple question of right and wrong. As a clergyman of the church he could not countenance a lie, live a lie, and stand idly by while Herresford compelled the bank to refund the money stolen from them by his wife. He had naturally argued the matter out with her, in love, in anger, in piteous appeal. It always came around to the same thing in the end--a compromise. The seven thousand dollars must be paid to the miser, if it took the rest of their lives to raise it; if they starved, and denied themselves common necessities. And Herresford must say that he drew the checks for innocent Dick. His wife agreed with him on these points; but on the question of confessing their sin--their joint sin it had become now--she was obdurate. She had yielded to his entreaties so far as to face the ordeal of an interview with her father, she agreed to the most painful economies; but further she would not go. If Herresford consented to add lie to lie, and to exonerate Dick by acknowledging the checks, all might yet be well. Now, when his wife came in, with flushed face and lips working in anger, he cried out, tremulously: "Well, Mary?" "It is useless, worse than useless!" she answered. "He is quite impossible, as I told you." "Then, he will not lend us the money?" "No, indeed, no. Worse, John, he knows." "Knows what?" "That I did it. He understood Dick well enough, in spite of his wicked abuse of him, and he had made him his heir. He accused me of altering the checks, and--I couldn't deny it." "Mary! Mary! You have ruined all. He will denounce us." "No, he doesn't intend to do that, John. He knows the torture we are enduring, and he wants it to go on. He means to let the bank lose the money." "Then, the burden of the guilt still rests on the shoulders of our dead son."