’Ach an wyr!  How you be talking.  You wos frightening me to death.  I ‘ouldn’t mind lending you a few hundreds, but—­’

’Hundreds won’t do, mother.  I must have five thousand six hundred before this week is out, or else—­It is impossible you could be cruel enough to see your only son in distress, and not help him out of it.’

’I have been helping you all your life, Howel.  I could lend you wan thousand, and no more, and if you’ll promise to be paying me soon.’

‘One thousand six hundred, mother, I must have that at least.’

It would be waste of time to write the reasons urged by Howel to induce his mother to advance him this money; but after some hours of entreaty, and a promise from him that he would repay it shortly, she consented to write the necessary cheque for that sum.  She insisted upon the business being managed through Mr Rice Rice, her attorney at home, and wrote to him to empower him to raise it as he best could for her son at once.

As she was a poor scribe, and a still worse orthographer, Howel superintended the letter, and when it was written said he would enclose and post it.  He was most particular in telling her where and how to write the figures; and before the ink was dry begged her to go to a davenport, which stood at the other end of the room, for a stamp.

No sooner was her back turned towards him, than with the same pen and ink he made the straight figure one into a four, and in the cheque which she had written, as well as in the accompanying letter, four thousand six hundred pounds held the place that one thousand six hundred had held when Mrs Griffith Jenkins left the table to go to the davenport.

If Howel trembled, or if his conscience smote him when he did this dreadful deed, he did not let his mother see it.

‘Perhaps, after all, you had better direct the letter, mother,’ he said, as he finished sealing it.  ’If I do it it will look as if I thought you couldn’t write, and you really write just as well as any other lady of your age.  I am really very much obliged to you.’

When Howel carried the letter out of the room, and went for a few moments into another, he said to himself, ’I can pay the whole back after the races, and manage so as to prevent her knowing anything about it.  And if the worst come to the worst, I must tell her what I did.  She won’t expose me; it will be a furious quarrel, and then all will be over.  We must keep her here for a long time, and I must get hold of her letters first and read them to her, and alter them if necessary.  Now I must look about for another thousand pounds.’

In due course of time the money was procured for Mrs Jenkins, and paid into a London bank.  Howel took possession of the letter of advice concerning it, and told his mother he had opened it because she was out when it arrived, and he had not a moment to lose in obtaining the money from the bank.  He kissed her, and talked to her, and hurried her and Netta to dress for a drive in the park with him, until he made her forget to obtain possession of the letter, and so far his fraud prospered.