“You were playing with thieves and blackguards.  There was not a gentleman in the room—­no, not one.”

“John, take care what you say.”

“A man is no better than the company he keeps.  Go with rascals and you will be counted one of them.  Yes, and so you ought to be.  I am ashamed of you!”

“I did not ask you to come into my company.  I did not want you.  It was most interfering of you.  Yes, John, I call it impudently interfering.  I gave way to you this time to prevent a police scene, but I will never do it again!  Never!”

“You will never go into such a den of iniquity again.  Never!  Mind that!  The dead and the living both will block your way.  We Hattons have been honest men in all our generations.  Sons of the soil, taking our living from the land on which we lived in some way or other—­never before from dirty cards in dirty hands and shuffled about in roguery, treachery, and robbery.  I feel defiled by breathing the same air with such a crowd of card-sharpers and scoundrels.”

“I say they were good honest gentlemen.  Sir Thomas Leland was there, and——­”

“I don’t care if they were all princes.  They were a bad lot, and theft and cards and brandy were written large on every sickly, wicked, white face of them.  O Harry, how dared you disgrace your family by keeping such company?”

“No one but a Methodist preacher is respectable in your eyes, John.  Everyone in Hatton knew the Naylors, yet you gave them the same bad names.”

“And they deserved all and more than they got.  They gambled with horses instead of cards.  They ran nobler animals than themselves to death for money—­and money for which neither labor nor its equivalent is given is dishonest money and the man who puts it in his pocket is a thief and puts hell in his pocket with it.”

“John, if I were you I would use more gentlemanly language.”

“O Harry!  Harry!  My dear, dear brother!  I am speaking now not only for myself but for mother and Lucy and your lovely children.  Who or what is driving you down this road of destruction?  I have left home at a hard time to help you.  Come to me, Harry!  Come and sit down beside me as you always have done.  Tell me what is wrong, my brother!”

Harry was walking angrily about the room, but at these words his eyes filled with tears.  He stood still and looked at John and when John stretched out his arms, he could not resist the invitation.  The next moment his head was on John’s breast and John’s arm was across Harry’s shoulders and John was saying such words as the wounded heart loves to hear.  Then Harry told all his trouble and all his temptation and John freely forgave him.  With little persuasion, indeed almost voluntarily, he gave John a sacred promise never to touch a card again.  And then there were some moments of that satisfying silence which occurs when a great danger has been averted or a great wrong been put right.