I was much pressed for time at this period,
and preoccupied with anxious and difficult cases;
but the thought of Arthur Bentmore was seldom
long absent from my mind. His pale miserable
face actually haunted me. His father had
confided him to my care, and I trembled for his
future. I saw him on the brink of ruin—
perhaps of destruction—yet I was powerless to
avert either. Meanwhile, a change took place
in his position and circumstances, which tended
rather to increase than to diminish my anxiety
on his account. He obtained the late butler's
place.

v.

One fine clear winter's day, some fourteen
months after the death of Mr. Jacobs, as I was
standing with my back to the fire in my consulting-
room, Arthur Bentmore, dressed in neat
plain clothes, entered, hat in hand.

He had grown very much during the last
twelvemonth; but he was thinner and paler than
I had ever before seen him. He was literally
cadaverous.

Our first mutual greetings over, he informed
me that he had come for two purposes: the
first, to announce that he was about to leave
Lady Fetherstone.

I started. About to leave Lady Fetherstone?
So good a service? so generous a mistress? who
valued him, as I had reason to know, very
highly! Something of undefined apprehension
shot through my mind.

But he went on to explain, that he had
not felt well for some weeks; had been
decidedly worse quite lately; and he was
conscious that he required rest—rest, entire and
complete. He was sorry, very sorry, to leave
Lady Fetherstone; she had been most kind to
him; but he should be laid up if he remained.
He had told her how it was; and she had quite
acquiesced. He was to leave in a month, if her
ladyship could suit herself. He required, as it
were, to to take breath. He drew—not
without a visible effort—a long breath as he spoke;
and I mentally resolved that as soon as his time
was up, he should come to my house and submit
to regular professional treatment from me.

But what was the other purpose for which
he had come?

He put his hat down on the floor. "You
have by you, sir," he answered, "some money
of mine."

"Money of yours!"

"Some silver, sir; only a trifle; nine shillings.
I brought it, if you remember, when I was a
lad; one morning in summer; and you put it
in your desk, to keep for me."

I remembered perfectly now the secret drawer
in which I had placed it. Yes; there was the
silver; almost black from age; three half-crowns,
two shillings, and a sixpence, with the three-
pence wrapped up in a paper by themselves.
As I pushed the little heap towards him, I said,
with a certain anxiety, "Surely, my good
Arthur, you don't need such a sum as this."

He met my gaze without flinching; yet a
slight tinge of colour rose to his cheek. I saw
it distinctly, as he said, "I do want it, if you
please, sir. You remember my father's debt to
Mr. Moreen."

"Certainly. Full well."

"I wish to pay it; and I make bold to ask
you to go with me when I pay it, sir."

He made a step forward, and laying an
envelope on the table, "There," said he, "are
eighty-seven pounds, which, with the silver and
coppers you have there, makes up the sum
owing."

I was so much astonished as to be for the
moment incapable of reflection. But soon, to
amazement, succeeded another feeling. The old
painful fear shot through me. I fixed my eyes
steadily on his.

"Arthur! how came you by all this money?"

He put his hand in his pocket and laid before
me a paper containing an exact account of every
shilling he had ever saved in service, and how
he had saved it.

This paper recorded a daily, hourly series of
sacrifices throughout the long course of four
years; begun at the age when self-conquest is
the hardest, self-indulgence the most natural;
continued with unchanging resolution in spite
of every trial, every temptation; persisted in to
the very end.

He spoke only once; as I was approaching
the end of his extraordinary memorandum; but
it was simply to explain that Mr. Gillies, the
schoolmaster, had put this money, at various
times, into the savings-bank for him, and had
thus realised a small increase, which, with the
fourteen shillings overplus in the account—the
month's wages and beer money that would be
due to him next month—and a few shillings of
presents he had accumulated, would go to maintain
him whilst he should continue out of
service. He might, he observed, have paid off
this debt a little sooner, as I could see; but he
considered that he should do wrong to leave
himself entirely without money.

I heard him, as he spoke, but I scarcely
heeded him. My mind—my heart were too
full. I was thinking of the suspicions I had
harboured against him—of the wrong I had
done him in my own thoughts; and he, all the
while, biding his time; leading a life of such
unexampled self-denial! To him it seemed,
however, that he had done no more than was
natural to be done in similar circumstances.

"You know, Mr. Moreen said, sir, that there
was no honesty in the blood! no honesty in the
blood! He said father was not honest: that we
was all a bad lot together. Now, I knew that
father was honest. The debt had been his
greatest distress in his last hours. I had
reason to know that; for many and many a
time he charged me to pay it; and so to clear
his memory. How, then, could I do other than
pay it?"

VI.

Mr. Moreen had risen materially in the world.
He had increased in both bodily and worldly
substance. But though a man, solid in every sense
of the word, and with—well! we will say some