The colour mounted high to the girl’s white brow, and her proud mouth quivered.  Never had she so felt the degradation of her poverty!  Now it seemed more than she could bear.  But she looked straight into her uncle’s unlovely countenance, and made answer, with a calmness which surprised herself,—­

’There is no money, none at all—­not even enough to pay all that must be paid.’

Abel Graham almost gasped.

’All that must be paid!  And, in Heaven’s name, how much is that?  Try to be practical and clear-headed, and remember I am a poor man, though willing to do my duty.’

’Mr. Courtney and I talked of it this morning, when we arranged that the funeral should be to-morrow,’ Gladys answered in a calm, straight, even voice, ’and we thought that there might be five pounds to pay when all was over.  Papa has some pictures at the dealers’—­two in Boston, and three, I think, in London.  Perhaps there might be enough from these to pay.’

‘You have the addresses of these dealers, I hope?’ said the old man, with undisguised eagerness.

‘Yes, I have the addresses.’

’Well, I shall apply to them, and put on the screw, if possible.  Will you tell me, if you please, how long you have lived in this place?’

’Oh, not long,—­in this village, I mean,—­only since summer.  We have been all over the fens, I think; but we have liked this place most of all.’

‘Heathens, wandering Jews, vagabonds on the face of the earth,’ said the old man to himself.  ’So you have arranged that it will be to-morrow—­you and the parson?  I hope he understands that he can get nothing for his pains?’

‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ said Gladys, and her mouth grew very stern—­her whole face during the last hour seemed to have taken on the stamp and seal of age.

‘And what hour have you arranged it for?’

‘Eleven, I think—­yes, eleven,’ answered Gladys, and gave a quick, sobbing breath, which the old man elected not to notice.

‘Eleven?’ He said it over slowly, and took a penny time-table from his pocket, and studied it thoughtfully.  ’We can get away from Boston at one.  It’s the worst kind of place this to get at, and I don’t know why on earth your father should have chosen it’—­’to die in,’ he had almost added; but he restrained these words.  ’We can’t get to Glasgow before midnight, I think.  I hope you won’t object to travelling in the night-time?  I must do it.  I can’t be away any longer from business; it must be attended to.  I hope you can be ready?’

‘I don’t mind it at all,’ answered Gladys in a still, quiet voice.  Her heart cried out against her unhappy destiny; but one so desolate, so helpless and forlorn, may not choose.  ‘Yes, I shall be ready.’

’Well, see that you are.  Punctuality is a virtue—­one not commonly found, I am told, in your sex.  You will remember, then, Mary, that I am a very poor man, struggling to get the necessaries of life.  You have no false and extravagant ideas of life, I hope?  Your father, surely, has taught you that it is a desperate struggle, in which men trample each other remorselessly under foot.  Heaven knows he has had experience of it, so far as I can hear and see.’