14,000
out of your head, I am much mistaken."
Alfred replied that foreign travel was his dream: but he could not leave
Barkington while there was an act of justice to be done.
"Then do me justice, boy," said Mr. Hardie, with wonderful dignity, all
things considered. "Instead of brooding on your one fantastical idea, and
shutting out all rational evidence to the contrary, take the trouble to
look through my books: and they will reveal to you a fortune, not of
fourteen thousand, but of eighty thousand pounds, honourably sacrificed
in the vain struggle to fulfil my engagements: who, do you think, will
believe, against such evidence, the preposterous tale you have concocted
against your poor father? Already the tide is turning, and all who have
seen the accounts of the Bank pity me; they will pity me still more if
ever they hear my own flesh and blood insults me in the moment of my
fall; sees me ruined by my honesty and living in a hovel, yet comes into
that poor but honest abode, and stabs me to the heart by accusing me of
stealing fourteen thousand pounds: a sum that would have saved me, if I
could only have laid my hands on it.
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