Yes; there lay the truth. They had treated him as a child when he was no longer a child. They had swathed him round with love, forgetting that boys grow and demand to see with their own eyes and walk on their own feet. To every mother of sons there comes sooner or later the sharp lesson which came to Humility that morning; and few can find any defence but that which Humility stammered, sitting in her chair and gazing piteously up at the tall youth confronting her: “I did it for your sake.” Be pitiful, oh accusing sons, in that hour! For, terrible as your case may be against them, your mothers are speaking the simple truth. Taffy took her hand. “The money must be paid back, every penny of it.” “Yes, dear.” “How much?” Humility kept a small account-book in the work-box beside her. She opened the pages, but, seeing his outstretched hand, gave it obediently to Taffy, who took it to the window. “Almost two hundred pounds.” He knit his brows and began to drum with his fingers on the window-pane. “And we must put the interest at five per cent.... With my first in Moderations I might find some post as an usher in a small school.... There’s an agency which puts you in the way of such things: I must look up the address.... We will leave this house, of course.” “Must we?” “Why of course we must. We are living here by _her_ favour. A cottage will do--only it must have four rooms, because of grandmother.... I will step over and talk with Mendarva. He may be able to give me a job. It will keep me going, at any rate, until I hear from the agency.” “You forget that I have over forty pounds a year--or, rather, mother has. The capital came from the sale of her farm, years ago.” “Did it?” said Taffy grimly. “You forget that I have never been told. Well, that’s good, so far as it goes. But now I’ll step over and see Mendarva. If only I could catch this cowardly lie somewhere on my way!” He kissed his mother, caught up his cap, and flung out of the house. The sea breeze came humming across the sandhills. He opened his lungs to it, and it was wine to his blood; he felt strong enough to slay dragons. “But who could the liar be? Not Lizzie herself, surely! Not--” He pulled up short in a hollow of the towans. “Not--George?” Treachery is a hideous thing; and to youth so incomprehensibly hideous that it darkens the sun. Yet every trusting man must be betrayed. That was one of the lessons of Christ’s life on earth. It is the last and severest test; it kills many, morally, and no man who has once met and looked it in the face departs the same man, though he may be a stronger one. “_Not George?_” Taffy stood there so still that the rabbits crept out and, catching sight of him, paused in the mouths of their burrows. When at length he moved on it was to take, not the path which wound inland to Mendarva’s, but the one which led straight over the higher moors to Carwithiel.