“‘My father?’ she said. “‘Yes,’ I says, not looking up, ‘Harry, just as he looked that morning in Louisville—only he was troubled.’ “Then I turned on her like I was makin’ a clean breast of it. I had the tears startin’ and the right choke-up, an’ it wasn’t all jury dope. I didn’t want that heavenly angel fouled over by little Westridge. It balled the heart out of me. “‘Now, Missie,’ I said, ‘you’ve got to help me even this thing up. I don’t know nothin’ about your affairs—I don’t want to know. But you’ve got to take that same bunch of money and chance it on something.’ “She shook her head, and I had a bad hour. All along that sea-path, with the fog dodging in and out, I kept right at her; I never lost a step. I was old and rich; money was nothin’ to me. I didn’t have a soul in the world. I couldn’t take it with me, an’ I couldn’t face ‘Harry’ with the debt hanging over—‘Have a heart! have a heart!’ That was my line of dope. I was pleading for myself—an’ it was the only line that ever would have got her. “‘But what should I do with the money?’ she said finally, in a sort of queer hesitation. “‘I’ll tell you that to-night,’ I answered.” The huge creature seemed to relax, as though there had been a vital tension in the mere memory of the thing. “That cleaned up my end of it,” he continued, “and after dinner when it was getting a little dark, I limped over to the church. I had the last copy of the _Financial Register_ in my hand. I stopped in the door. The church was closed and it was dark, but I didn’t need any light for the business I come on. “‘Governor,’ I says, ‘the rest of this job’s up to you. I’m a-goin’ to open this magazine here in the dark and the first thing that’s advertised at the top of the page on the right-hand side is the thing I’m a-goin’ to tell her to put the coin on—Ready,’ I says, ‘go to it!’ and I folded back the page and went over to the hotel.” Again he paused. “I got a jolt when I saw the page. It was some sort of Canadian gold mine, so fishy that the letters had scales on ’em. But I says to myself, ‘That’s the Governor’s business,’ an’ I cut it out, put it into an envelope with the draft, and left it at the desk for her.” He paused. “The next morning I slid out. Eight months later the plague struck me. I crippled into England, asked her to hide me while I died, and she put me here.” “And the gold stock,” I said, “I suppose it turned her out a fortune?” The energy came back for an instant into his voice. “It was so rotten,” he replied, “that the Governor General of Canada summoned all the victims to meet with him for a conference in Montreal.” At this moment I caught the sound of a motor entering the gates at some distance through the park. The huge paralytic also heard it, and his attention was no longer toward me. It was on the great coach-colored limousine drawing up at the end of the avenue of ancient beech trees. I looked with him.