“Slater, did you say, Uncle George—­and Hampson?  Aren’t they my old accounts?”

“Quite right, Mr. Rutter—­quite right, sir.”  St. George tried to stop him with a frown, but Pawson’s face was turned towards Harry and he failed to get the signal.  “Quite right, and quite lucky; they were both important items in Mr. Gadgem’s list, and both checks passed through the bank and were paid before the smash came.”

The tones of Pawson’s voice, the twisting together of his bony hands in a sort of satisfied contentment, and the weary look on his uncle’s face were the opening of so many windows in the boy’s brain.  At the same instant one of those creepy chills common to a man when some hitherto undiscovered vista of impending disaster widens out before him, started at the base of Harry’s spine, crept up his shoulder-blades, shivered along his arms, and lost itself in his benumbed fingers.  This was followed by a lump in his throat that nearly strangled him.  He left his chair and touched Pawson on the shoulder.

“Does this mean, Mr. Pawson—­this money being locked up in the bank vaults and not coming out for months—­and may be never—­does it mean that Mr. Temple—­well, that Uncle George—­won’t have enough money to live on?” There was an anxious, vibrant tone in Harry’s voice that aroused St. George to a sense of the boy’s share in the calamity and the privations he must suffer because of it.  Pawson hesitated and was about to belittle the gravity of the situation when St. George stopped him.

“Yes—­tell him—­tell him everything, I have no secrets from Mr. Rutter.  Stop!—­I’ll tell him.  It means, Harry”—­and a brave smile played about his lips—­“that we will have to live on hog and hominy, may be, or pretty nigh it—­certainly for a while—­not bad, old fellow, when you get accustomed to it.  Aunt Jemima makes very good hominy and—­”

He stopped; the brave smile had faded from his face.

“By Jove!—­that’s something I didn’t think of!—­What will I do with the dear old woman—­It would break her heart—­and Todd?”

Here was indeed something on which he had not counted!  For him to forego the luxuries that enriched his daily life was easy—­he had often in his hunting trips lived for weeks on sweet potato and a handful of cornmeal, and slept on the bare ground with only a blanket over him, but that his servants should be reduced to similar privations suggested possibilities which appalled him.  For the first time since the cruel announcement fell from Rutter’s lips the real situation, with all that it meant to his own future and those dependent upon him, stared him in the face.

He looked up and caught Harry’s anxious eyes scanning his own.  His old-time, unruffled spirit came to his assistance.

“No, son!” he cried in his cheeriest voice, springing to his feet—­“no, we won’t worry.  It will all come out right—­we’ll buckle down to it together, you and I. Don’t take it too much to heart—­we’ll get on somehow.”