“Yes—­and another hundred the next day, which isn’t down,” rejoined the young man, running his eye over the list.

“Borrowed it?”

“Yes, of course—­for Gilbert.  He got into a card scrape at the tavern and I helped him out.  I told my father all about it and he said I had done just right; that I must always help a friend out in a case like that, and that he’d pay it.  All he objected to was my borrowing it of a tradesman instead of my coming to him.”  It was an age of borrowing and a bootmaker was often better than a banker.

“Well—­but why didn’t you go to him?” He wanted to get at all the facts.

“There wasn’t time.  Gilbert had to have the money in an hour, and it was the only place where I could get it.”

“Of course there wasn’t time—­never is when the stakes are running like that.”  St. George folded up the memorandum.  He knew something of Talbot’s iron will, but he never supposed that he would lose his sense of what was right and wrong in exercising it.  Again he opened the list—­rather hurriedly this time, as if some new phase had struck him—­studied it for a moment, and then asked with an increased interest in his tones: 

“Did Gilbert give you back the money you loaned him?”

“Yes—­certainly; about a month afterward.”  Here at least was an asset.

St. George’s face lighted up.  “And what did you do with it?”

“Took it to my father and he told me to use it; that he would settle with Mr. Slater when he paid his account;—­when, too, he would thank him for helping me out.”

“And when he didn’t pay it back and these buzzards learned you had quit your father’s house they employed Gadgem to pick your bones.”

“Yes—­it seems so; but, Uncle George, it’s due them!” exclaimed Harry—­“they ought to have their money.  I would never have taken a dollar—­or bought a thing if I had not supposed my father would pay for them.”  There was no question as to the boy’s sense of justice—­every intonation showed it.

“Of course it’s due—­due by you, too—­not your father; that’s the worst of it.  And if he refuses to assume it—­and he has—­it is still to be paid—­every cent of it.  The question is how the devil is it to be paid—­and paid quickly.  I can’t have you pointed out as a spendthrift and a dodger.  No, this has got to be settled at once.”

He threw himself into a chair, his mind absorbed in the effort to find some way out of the difficulty.  The state of his own bank account precluded all relief in that direction.  To borrow a dollar from the Patapsco on any note of hand he could offer was out of the question, the money stringency having become still more acute.  Yet help must be had, and at once.  Again he unfolded the slip and ran his eyes over the items, his mind in deep thought, then he added in an anxious tone: 

“Are you aware, Harry, that this list amounts to several thousand dollars?”