Within two or three days Sukey wrote to Rita, whom she knew to be the cause of Dic's desertion. The letter to Rita, like the one to Dic, contained no word of reproach. "I do not blame you for keeping him," she said in closing. "He has always belonged to you. I hope you will be happy and not trouble yourselves about me. No one knows about this terrible affair, Rita, but you and Dic, and I hope you will tell nobody. Especially, please, please, don't tell Tom. This is the only request I make: don't let Tom know anything about it. I want to confess, Rita, that I have been very wicked, and that Dic is not to blame. I feel it my duty to tell you this, so that you may not blame him. I have brought trouble to you both, and it is as little as I should do to tell you the truth. The fault was mine. I gave him a love powder. But I loved him."
Sukey's letter came one morning four or five days before Christmas. Rita wept all day over it, and at night it helped her in taking a step that settled all the momentous questions touching Dic and herself.
On the same fateful day Mr. Bays and Tom came home together in the middle of the afternoon. That unwonted event was, in itself, alarming. Rita was reading near the window, and her mother was knitting before the fire. When our Toms, father and son, entered the room, trouble was plainly visible upon their faces. Tom senior threw his cap and great fur coat on the bed, while De Triflin' leaned against the mantel-shelf. Drawing a chair to the fire, Tom the elder said:—
"Well, Margarita, I guess we're ruined—Jim and me and Tom—all of us. I see no earthly way out of it."
"What's the matter?" asked Madam Jeffreys, folding her knitting and placing it in her lap with great deliberation. Rita dropped her book, and went over to her father.
"Williams, I suppose?" queried Madam Jeffreys.
"Yes; he has had orders from home to collect the money we owe the house, or else to take the store, the farm, our household furniture, everything, at once. Williams leaves for home Christmas Day, and everything must be settled before then. He gives us till to-morrow noon to raise the money. But that is not the worst," continued Mr. Bays, nervously, rising and turning his back to the fire, "Tom has—has overdrawn his account more than a thousand dollars in Williams's office. Williams don't call it 'overdrawn.' He calls it embezzlement, theft. Tom and me went to Judge Blackford and told him just how the money was taken. The Judge says Williams is right about it; it is embezzlement, and Williams says the firm insists on prosecuting Tom and sending him to the penitentiary if the money is not replaced. God only knows what we are to do, Margarita. The farm is mortgaged for its full value, and so far as I can see we are ruined, ruined." Tears began to flow over his cheeks, and Rita, drawing his face down to hers, stood on tiptoe and tried to kiss the tears away.
"Let me go to see Billy Little," she said in desperation. "He will lend us the money; I know he will."
"Like h—he will," cried gentle Tom. "Dic asked him to loan me enough money to pay my overdraft—said he would go on the note—but he refused point blank; said the twenty-three hundred dollars he loaned father and Uncle Jim Fisher was all the money he had. The miserly old curmudgeon!"
Mrs. Bays went weeping to Tom's side. "Poor Tom, my dear, dear son," she whimpered, trying to embrace him.