And yet if the truth be told his own situation had not improved—­in fact, it had grown steadily worse.  Only one payment of interest had been made on the mortgage and the owner was already threatening foreclosure proceedings.  Pawson’s intervention alone had staved off the fatal climax by promising the holder to keep the loan alive by the collection of some old debts—­borrowed money and the like—­due St. George for years and which his good nature had allowed to run on indefinitely until some of them were practically outlawed.  Indeed it was only through resources like this, in all of which Pawson helped, and with the collecting of some small ground rents, that kept Todd and Jemima in their places and the larder comfortably filled.  As to the bank—­there was still hope that some small percentage would be paid the depositors, it being the general opinion that the directors were personally liable because of the irregularities which the smash had uncovered—­but this would take months, if not years, to work out.

His greatest comfort was in the wanderer’s letters.  These he would watch for with the eagerness of a girl hungry for news of her distant lover.  For the first few months these came by every possible mail, most of them directed to himself; others to his mother, Mrs. Rutter driving in from Moorlands to compare notes with St. George.  Then, as the boy made his way further into the interior the intervals were greater—­sometimes a month passed without news of him.

“We are short-handed,” he wrote St. George, “owing to fever on the voyage out on the Ranger, and though I am supercargo and sit at the captain’s table, I have to turn to and work like any of the others—­fine exercise, but my hands are cracked and blistered and full of tar.  I’ll have to wear gloves the next time I dine with you.”

Not a word of this to his mother—­no such hardships for her tender ears: 

“Tell me about Kate, mother”—­this from Rio—­“how she looks; what she says; does she ever mention my name?  My love to Alec.  Is Matthew still caring for Spitfire, or has my father sold her?” Then followed the line:  “Give my father my respectful regards; I would send my love, but he no longer cares for it.”

The dear lady did not deliver the message.  Indeed Harry’s departure had so widened the breach between the colonel and herself that they practically occupied different parts of the house as far removed from each other as possible.  She had denounced him first to his face for the boy’s self-imposed exile, and again behind his back to her intimates.  Nor did her resolve waver even when the colonel was thrown from his horse and so badly hurt that his eyesight was greatly impaired.  “It is a judgment on you,” she had said, drawing her frail body up to its full height.  “You will now learn what other people suffer,” and would have kept on upstairs to her own room had not her heart softened at his helplessness—­a new role for the colonel.