“But I won enough to clear myself, and that’s why I——”
“Hugh,” Stephen’s voice broke, “I wouldn’t have believed it.”
Hugh turned on his brother in dismay: “Stephen! you don’t mean that you think——”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were in trouble?” Pryde said sorrowfully. “I would have helped you, if I could.”
“But I wasn’t in trouble,” the boy protested impatiently. “I tell you I’m innocent.”
With a gesture of infinite sadness and his face quivering Stephen Pryde laid his hand on Hugh’s shoulder. “Hugh,” he said, and now his voice broke as a mother’s might have broken, “Hugh, I am your brother—I love you—can’t you trust me?” he pleaded. “Even now we may find a way out of this, if you will only tell the truth.”
“But I have told the truth,” Hugh asserted helplessly. His voice broke, too, as he said it.
Stephen Pryde turned to his uncle and they exchanged a slow look—a look of mutual sorrow and despair. Hugh saw the look, shrugged his shoulders and crossed to Helen’s chair.
“Helen, you don’t believe this, do you?”
Stephen turned and watched them intently.