Stuart stepped close and slipped his arm about the stalwart figure. His voice was tender with a man's deep feeling.
"Come, Doctor, you're not fooling me. I've known you too long. There's only one man on earth for whom I'd do as much as I would for you—my own gray-haired father down South. You've been everything to me one man could be to another during the past fifteen years. You have given me a home, the love of a big tender heart, and the wise counsel of tried friendship. If there's anything that I have and you need, it's yours before you ask it, to the last dollar I possess. Come now—tell me what's the trouble?"
Stuart could feel the big form sway and tremble under the stress of overwhelming emotion, and his arm pressed a little closer. And then the tension suddenly broke.
The doctor sank into a chair and looked up with a helpless stare.
"Yes, Jim, I will—I'll—tell—you."
He gasped and choked, paused, pulled himself together and cried:
"I must tell somebody or jump out of that window and dash my brains out!"
When the paroxysm of emotion had spent itself, he drew a deep sigh and began to speak in broken accents.
"I was in trouble for money, my boy, in the deepest trouble."
"And you didn't let me know!" Stuart interrupted reproachfully.