‘Very well,’ said John Jervase again. ‘There’s the father’s hand refused, and there’s the commission chucked into the gutter. Now here’s a cheque for a thousand pound as you can cash with Cox & Co. in London. Are you a-going to take that, or are you not?’ ‘I’m not likely,’ said Polson, ‘to have any sort of use for money.’ ‘You’re hard,’ said his father. ‘You’re bitter hard. There’s the ‘and refused. There’s the commission chucked, and there’s the check too dirty for you to look at. Very well. Now there’s fifty notes for twenty pounds a-piece. Will you take them?’ ‘No,’ said the youngster, ‘I shall have no want of money and no use for it.’ ‘You’re hard,’ said Jervase. ‘You’re bitter hard. Will you take one of them? It might come in useful. Take it, Polly. Just take it, even if you never spend it.’ He clutched one note from the heap which lay upon the table, and held it in a shaking hand towards his son. And Polson still stood like a statue, and stared out of the window. He would fain have been more relenting had he dared, but he feared the loss of his own manhood if he once began to pardon, and perhaps he was severer to himself than to the old man who begged for his forgiveness. ‘There’s the ‘and,’ said Jervase, weeping openly. ‘He won’t touch that. There’s the commission only waiting for him to sign, and he won’t touch that. There’s a cheque for a thousand pound as would send him to the war fitted out like a gentleman, and he won’t touch that. There’s the ready money to the same amount as would help him to hold his head up among his comrades anywhere, and he won’t touch that. And here’s a note for a mere twenty pounds, and his father asks him just to take it as a sort of a memorial, and to keep it like as if it was a funeral card, and he won’t touch that.’ Polson was white to the lips, but he looked straight before him still, and gave no sign. Jervase took up the agent’s letter and deliberately tore it into pieces. He took up his own cheque and tore that into pieces also. He patted the pile of notes together and put them into his breast pocket, crying all the while with odd little child-like snatches of sound which were wounding to listen to. The bugles sang out again in the square, and the distant hoofs were clattering on the cobbled stones in front of the stables. Through the window Polson could see the glitter of the polished brass of the band, as it moved slowly across the square towards the barrack gate, and formed up in a solid cube. There was a crowd outside in the streets, and from it rose a noise of cheering. There was silence in the room except for those child-like, unrestrained sobs which shook John Jervase; and even these quieted down as if he too were listening to the growing tumult outside. There was a sudden roll of drums, and the band began to play ‘The Girl I left behind me.’ An imperious rap sounded at the door, and Colonel Stacey entered without waiting for a response.