"Are you trying to implicate Mac in this matter to spare Lewis, is that it?"
"No, sir. I don't say it was Mr. Mac. I only say it wasn't Dan. There are some people you just know are straight, and Dan's one of them."
Mr. Clarke got up and took a turn about the room, his hands locked behind him. Her last shot had evidently taken effect.
"Tell me exactly what Mac told you about this Meyers note," he demanded.
Nance recounted the facts in the case, ending with the promise Mac had made her to tell his father everything and begin anew.
"I wish I had known this Saturday!" Mr. Clarke said, sinking heavily into his chair. "I came down on the boy pretty severely on another score and gave him little chance to say anything. Did he happen to mention the exact amount of his indebtedness to Meyers?"
"He said it was five hundred and sixty dollars."
A sigh that was very like a groan escaped from Mr. Clarke; then he pulled himself together with an effort.
"You understand, Miss Molloy," he said, "that it is quite a different thing for my son to have done this, and for Lewis to have done it. Mac knows that what is mine will be his eventually. If he signed that check, he was signing his own name as well as mine. Of course, he ought to have spoken to me about it. I am not excusing him. He has been indiscreet in this as well as in other ways. I shall probably get a letter from him in a few days explaining the whole business. In the meanwhile the matter must go no further. I insist upon absolute silence. You understand?"
She nodded.