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_


At last Alfred decided that justice _must_ be done, and confided his