"Mr. Hobson," I said, coming at once to the point, "I have heard your sad story, and I have come to offer you some small relief. I am prepared to accept from you the sum of twenty thousand pounds, and I hope that with this assistance you will be able to make a fresh start and get free of your difficulties." His thin face, already beginning to fill out from the course of high feeding to which he had been brought, flushed eagerly, and his eyes brightened, but sank immediately to their previous unhappy dullness. "You are very kind, Mr. Howard," he said, "but I am beyond help, I fear. I could not hold out any hope of asking you to repay me. My spirit is broken. Nothing goes right with me. A week ago I might have accepted such relief, and promised to take back the money when times were brighter. But they will never be brighter for me. I could not even use the interest you would pay me for a sum of twenty thousand pounds." "But I don't want to pay the money back, and I don't want to pay any interest," I assured him. "I am not a money borrower. I have a good deal less than I know what to do with, and nothing will give me greater pleasure than to receive twenty thousand pounds, or even thirty thousand, as a free gift from you. We should keep the transaction entirely to ourselves, and nobody outside need know anything about it at all." He stared at me in amazement, and then suddenly broke down altogether, and sobbed. "Oh, it is too much!" he cried. "Who are you, that you come as a messenger of hope, when nothing but ruin and darkness seemed to surround me? And why do you do it?" These were rather awkward questions. "Never mind that," I said. "Everybody has his own axe to grind, and I assure you that you will oblige me as much as I shall oblige you by presenting me with twenty thousand pounds, or even thirty thousand, as I said. Yes, we will make it thirty thousand. You shall write me a cheque at once--to bearer--and I will go straight to the bank and get the money." When I had overcome his resistance, which wasted a lot of time, he told me that he could not write me a cheque as every penny that came in was reinvested at once, in a mad effort to lose it. "But if you are really serious," he said, "I can give you stocks and shares to the amount you so generously mention, and you can realize on them, or keep them on the chance of going down if you like, which they might do for you but will never do for me." I was a little disappointed, but it made it easier for me in one way, for I could pretend that I hoped the securities would show a downward movement; and it also made it easier for him. Before we had completed our business, Mr. Hobson had almost persuaded himself that he was doing me a good turn in presenting me with the shares, which he said were bound to lose me a large fortune if I could hold on to them long enough; and I encouraged him to believe that I _should_ hold on to them with that end in view.