Mr. Hardie said faintly, “Certainly; may I ask——­”

“No matter,” cried Dodd.  “Come!  My money!  I must and will have it.”

Hardie drew himself up majestically; and Dodd said, “Well, I beg your pardon, but I can’t help it!”

The banker’s mind went into a whirl.  It was death to part with this money and get nothing by it.  He made excuses.  Dodd eyed him sternly, and said quietly, “So you can’t give me my money because your cashier has carried it away.  It is not in this room, then?”

“No.”

“What, not in that safe there?”

“Certainly not,” said Hardie stoutly.

“My money!  My money!” cried David fiercely.  “No more words.  I know you now.  I saw you put it in that safe.  You want to steal my children’s money.  My money, ye pirate, or I’ll strangle you!”

While Hardie unlocked the safe with trembling hands, Dodd stood like a man petrified; the next moment his teeth gnashed loudly together, and he fell headlong on the floor in a fit.  So the L14,000 remained with the banker.

Not many days after this a crowd stood in front of the old bank, looking at the shutters, and a piece of paper announcing a suspension, only for a month or so.

Many things now came to Alfred Hardie’s knowledge till he began to shudder at his own father, and was troubled with dark, mysterious surmises, and wandered alone, or sat brooding and dejected.  Richard Hardie’s anxiety to know whether David Dodd was to live or die increased.  He was now resolved to fly to the United States with his booty, and cheat his son with the rest.  On his putting a smooth inquiry to Alfred, his face flushed with shame or anger, and he gave a very short, obscure reply.  So he invited the doctor to dinner, and elicited the information that David’s life indeed was saved, but he was a maniac; and his sister, a sensible, resolute woman, had signed the certificate, and he was now in a private asylum.

Mr. Hardie smiled, and sipped his tea luxuriously; he would not have to go to a foreign land after all.  Who would believe a lunatic?  He said, “I presume, Alfred, you are not so far gone as to insist on propagating insanity by a marriage with Captain Dodd’s daughter now?”

Alfred ground his teeth, and replied that his father should be the last man to congratulate himself on the affliction that had fallen on that family he aspired to enter, all the more now they had calamities for him to share.

“More fool you,” put in Mr. Hardie calmly.

“For I much fear you are the cause of that calamity.”

“I really don’t know what you allude to.”

The son fixed his eyes on his father, and said, “The fourteen thousand pounds, sir!”

One unguarded look confirmed Alfred’s suspicions; he could not bear to go on exposing his father, and wandered out, sore perplexed and nobly wretched, into the night.

III.—­Alfred in Confinement