Shortly after Scrafton's departure, Gordon Lowndes also took his leave. It was not, however, until he had offered Harry his hand with much diffidence, and the younger man had grasped it without a moment's hesitation. At this the other coloured and dropped his eyes, but stood for some moments returning Harry's pressure twofold.

"Ringrose," he faltered, "I would give all I'm worth to-night to have told the truth in the beginning. But how could I? I might as well have blown my brains out. I—I tried to be your friend instead. I suppose you'll never let me be your friend any more?"

It is doubtful whether any man could have said these words to Harry Ringrose, in any conceivable circumstances, without receiving some such response as that which instantly burst from his lips. Want of generosity was not one of Harry's faults; yet he had no sooner forgiven Lowndes, once and for all, and with a whole heart, than an inner voice reminded him that he had but served self-interest in doing so; and the reason, coming home to him like a bullet, gave a strange turn to his emotions.

The father was sitting in a deep reverie in his wife's chair: his face was in his hands: he neither saw nor heard. Harry looked at him, hesitated, and in the end not only saw Lowndes to the door but accompanied him downstairs in the first leaden light of the September morning. He had something more to say.

He merely wanted to know whether Miss Lowndes was in town, and whether he might call. Yet he only got it out as they were shaking hands for the last time.

"You mean at Berkeley Square?" said Lowndes.

"Yes—if I may."

"You'll have to be quick about it, Ringrose. We leave there in a day or two. The men are already in the house. Still, I've no doubt she'll be glad to see you."

"Taking a country seat?" asked Harry, smiling.

"No, a suburban one: the sort of thing we had at Richmond, only rather better."

"You don't mean it!"

"A fact."

"But the Crofters are paying such a dividend?"

Gordon Lowndes shrugged his shoulders with a gesture that reminded Harry of former days.

"A paltry fourteen per cent.!" said he. "I'm sick of it. I thought we should all be millionaires by this time. I've sold out, and, of course, at a good enough figure; but we've been doing ourselves pretty well these last few years, and I haven't got much change out of the Crofters after all. In point of fact, it would take a few thousands to clear me; but, on the other hand, the credit's better than ever it was, and I'm simply chock-a-block with new plans. Loaded to the muzzle, Ringrose, and just spoiling for the fray! I know my nature better than ever I knew it before. I wasn't built for sitting in a chair and drawing my salary and receiving my dividends. I've found that out. It's worrying the thing through that I enjoy; there's some sport in that. However, I'm as lively as an old cheese with schemes and ideas; and one of them, at least, should appeal to you. It's a composite daily paper on absolutely new lines—that is, on all existing lines run parallel for a penny. My idea is to knock out the Times and the Guardian on one hand, and Punch and the Pink 'Un on the other. What should you say to coming in as comic editor at a four-figure screw?"

"Where's the capitalist?" was what Harry said.

"Where is he not?" cried Lowndes. "Every man Jack of them would jump at it! I made such a success of the Crofters that I could raise a million to-morrow for any crack-brained scheme I liked to put my name to. Yes, my boy, I'll have my pick of the capitalists this time; have them coming to me with their hats in one hand and their cheque-books in the other; but, between ourselves, I don't think we shall have far to seek for our man, Ringrose!"

"What do you mean?" cried Harry, his curiosity whetted by the other's tone.

"Ask your father," was the reply. "I may be mistaken, and he mayn't have made such a pile as I imagine; but he'll tell you as soon as he has you to himself; and meanwhile I'll warn Fanny that you're going to look her up."

A hansom tinkled and twinkled across the jaws of Earl's Court Road; and as the light-hearted rapscallion darted off in pursuit, few would have believed with what a deed he had been connected; fewer still with what emotion he had lamented his wickedness not five minutes ago.

The father had not stirred, but he looked up as Harry burst in, breathless and ashamed.

"What, have you been out?"

"Yes, father," with deep humility.

"And where is Lowndes?"

"I have been seeing him off."

"I never heard him go," said Mr. Ringrose, with a deep sigh. "The old things about me—they carried me back into the past. One question, Harry, and then you shall hear all you care to know. We found out from the commissionaire that your mother is at Eastbourne. What is she doing there?"

"I thought it would set her up for the winter."

"Is she not well?"

"Perfectly, father; but—she likes it, and—we were able to do it last year."

"She is in lodgings, then, and alone?"

"Yes."

"When does the next train leave?"

"Eight-ten," said Harry, a minute later.

Mr. Ringrose had shaded his eyes once more. They shone like a young man's as with a sudden gesture he whisked his hand away and snatched at his watch.

"Only five hours more! Thank God—thank God—that I can look her in the face to-day!"

"Do you remember how I taught you to swim when you were a tiny shrimp? It was my one accomplishment in my own boyhood, my one love among outdoor sports, and I sometimes think it must have been implanted in me for the express purpose of saving my life when the time came. Certainly nothing else could have saved it; and I cannot think that I was spared by mere chance, Harry, but intentionally, for better things. Mine had been an easy life up to that time; even in my difficulties it had been an easy life. Well, it has not been easy since!

"He stunned me first—that's how it happened. He struck me a murderous blow as I was leaving him to go in search of Lowndes. I knew no more until I was in the water. Then, before my head was clear, my limbs were doing their work. I was keeping myself afloat. I kept myself afloat until close upon daylight, when a French fisherman picked me up. He carried me to his cottage on the coast, and treated me from first to last with a kindness which I hope still to reward. At the time I bought his silence, with but little faith in his sticking to his bargain; now I know how loyally he must have done so. When I left him it was to find my way to Havre, and at Havre I took ship for Naples. I had still a little paper-money which had not come to me from Lowndes, and which I did not think likely to leave traces. With this money I transhipped at Naples, after reading of my own mysterious disappearance from Dieppe. Yes, that puzzled me; but I thought and thought, and hit at last upon something not altogether unlike the actual explanation. No, I never contemplated returning to unmask the villain who had attempted my murder. I was beginning to feel almost grateful to him. It was to him I owed such a fresh start as no ruined man ever had before.... Harry, Harry, don't look like that! My ruin was complete in any case. How could I come back and say I had been running away with the money, but had thought better of it? I could have come back in the beginning, and met my creditors without telling them what I had been tempted to do. This was impossible now. It was too late to undo the immediate effects of my disappearance; it was not too late to begin life afresh under another name and in another land. Rightly or wrongly, that is what I resolved to do—for my family's sake as much as for my own. They must forgive me, or my heart will break!"

It was to Durban that the fugitive had taken ship at Naples. He had landed on those shores within a month of the day on which his son had quitted them. And the first man he met there was one who recognised him on the spot. But good came of it; the man was an old friend, and proved a true one; he was down from Johannesburg on business, and when he returned Mr. Ringrose accompanied him. With this staunch friend the ironmaster's secret was safe; and partly through him, and partly with him—for within the year the pair were partners—the man who had lost a fortune bit by bit in the old country had made another by leaps and bounds in the new. Which was a sufficiently romantic story when Harry came to hear it in detail at a later date. At the time it was but the bare fact that the father cared to chronicle or the son to hear. It was the result on which Mr. Ringrose preferred to dwell. That very day he had returned with interest (before he knew that his wife had been paying it all these years) the money those four old friends had lent him through Gordon Lowndes. He had barely touched it, and would have returned it long ago, only he did not want his wife and son to know that he was alive until he could come back to them a rich enough man to atone in some degree for the wrong that he had done them—for the poverty and the shame they had endured for his sake.

Harry said that Lowndes had spoken as though his father was a millionaire. Mr. Ringrose smiled slightly as he shook his head.

"That's entirely his own idea," said he. "There might have been some truth in it in a few more years; but, as it is, it was no great pile I set myself to make, and I am more than content in having made it. In point of fact I am a poorer man than I was when you were born, but I am a free man for the first time for many years. This very day I have paid every penny that I owed here in town. A cheque is also on its way to the old firm, with which they can settle to-morrow any outstanding liabilities, and put the rest into the works in my name. And now I can face your mother. I could not do it until I could tell her this."

Yet he had not been a dozen hours in England; the cheques had been written on board, and posted the moment he landed. On reaching London he had gone straight to Gordon Lowndes, and it was only the almost simultaneous arrival of Scrafton which had kept him so long from seeking his own. Scrafton, who had latterly taken to pestering his victim almost daily, had ultimately left him (to the delight of Lowndes) with the avowed intention of carrying out his old threat and going straight to Harry Ringrose. In what followed Harry's father had once more yielded, against his better judgment, to Gordon Lowndes.

"It was his frankness that did it," said Mr. Ringrose; "he told me everything, before he need have told me anything at all, in his sheer joy at seeing me alive. He told me everything that he has since told you, and upon my word I am not sure that you or I would have acted very differently in his place. It was while we were talking that Scrafton called, and I learned for myself how Lowndes had suffered at his hands. I could not refuse to give him his revenge, though I should have vastly preferred to give it him there. Scrafton had gone, however, and Lowndes seemed almost equally anxious that you should judge between them, as it were, on their merits. So he had his way ... I am glad you have made it up with him, Harry. He is a strange mixture of good and bad, but which of us is not? And which of us does not need forgiveness from the other? I—most of all—need it from you!"

"And I from you," said Harry in a low voice.

"You? Why?"

"Four years ago I suspected foul play. I was sure of it. Some other time I will tell you why."

"I rather think Lowndes has told me already. Well?"

"I held my tongue! I found out most on the promise of not trying to find out any more. I shall never forgive myself for making that promise—and keeping it."

"Nay; thank God you did that!"

"You don't know what I mean."

"I think I do."

"Every day I have felt a traitor to you!"

"I think there has been a little morbid exaggeration," said Mr. Ringrose, with his worn smile. "What good could you have done? And to whom did you make this promise?"

Harry told him with a red face.

The night was at an end. Milk-carts clattered in the streets; milkmen clattered on the stairs. Harry put out the single light that had been burning all night in the sober front of the many-windowed mansions; and in the early morning he took his father over the flat. The rooms had never seemed so few—so tiny. Mr. Ringrose made no remark until he was back in the only good one that the flat contained.

"And your mother has made shift here all these years!" he exclaimed then, and the remorse in his voice had never sounded so acute.

"Oh, no; we have only been here a year."

"Where were you before?"

"In a smaller flat downstairs."

"A smaller one than this? God forgive me! I was not prepared for much; but from what I read I did expect more than this!"

"From what you read?" cried Harry. "Read where?"

A new light shone in the father's face. "In some paragraphs I once stumbled across in some paper—I have them in my pocket at this moment!" said he. "Did you suppose I never saw your name in the papers, Harry? It has been my one link with you both. I saw it first by accident, and ever since I have searched for it, and sent for everything I could hear of that had your name to it. So I have always had good news of you; and sometimes between the lines I have thought I read good news of your mother too. God bless you ... God bless you ... for working for her ... and taking my place."

The old servant wept over her old master as though her heart would break with gladness. Her breakfast was a sorry thing, but no sooner was it on the table than she was sent down for a hansom, and she was still whistling when the gentlemen rushed after her and flew to find one for themselves. It was ten minutes to eight, and their train left Victoria at ten minutes past.

Mrs. Ringrose was reading quietly in her room—reading some proof-sheets which Harry had posted to her the day before—when she heard the bell ring and her boy's own step upon the stairs. "You have news!" she cried as he entered; then at his face—"He has come back!"

"Mother, did you expect it?"

"I have expected it every morning of all these years. I have prayed for it every night."

"Your prayer is answered!"

"Where is he?"

"I left him in the cab——"

"But he could not wait!" cried a broken voice; and as Harry stood aside to let his father pass, he could see nothing through his own tears, but he never forgot the next words he heard.

"I have paid them all—all—all!" his father cried. "I can look the world in the face once more!"

"I care nothing about that," his mother answered. "You have come back to me. Oh! you have come back!"