"Who do you suppose has been helping you all this year?" demanded Roland. "When you were afraid of the county-court over a boot bill, somebody paid the money and sent you the receipt anonymously: who has kept your wife and children in rent and clothes and food, and all kinds of comforts, while you gave wine parties in your chambers, and went starring it over the seas for weeks in people's yachts? Hamish Channing. He deprived himself of his holiday, that your wife and children might be fed, you abandoning them: he has lived sparingly in spite of his failing health, that you and yours might profit. You and he were brought up in the same place, boys together, and he could not see your children want. They've never had a fraction of help but what it came from Hamish and his wife."
"It is a lie," said Gerald. But he was staggered, and he half felt that it was not.
"It is the truth, as heaven knows," cried Roland, breaking down with a burst. "Ask Winny, she told me. I'd have given my own poor worthless life freely, to save the pain of those false and cruel reviews to Hamish."
Sheer emotion stopped Roland's tongue. Mrs. Channing, entering, found the room in silence; the storm was over. Roland escaped. Gerald, amazingly uncomfortable, had a mind to run away there and then.
"Will you come up, Gerald?" she said.
Hamish lay in bed in his large cheerful chamber, bright with fire and light. His head was raised; one hand was thrown over the white coverlid; and a cup of tea waited on a stand by the bed-side. Roland stood by the fire, his chest heaving.
"But what is it, old fellow?" demanded Hamish. "What has put you out?"
"It is this, Hamish--that I wish I could have died instead of you," came the answer at last, with a burst of grief.
He sat down in the shade in a quiet corner, for his brother's step was heard. As Gerald approached the bed, he visibly recoiled. It was some time since he had seen Hamish, and he verily believed he stood in the presence of death. Hamish held out his hand with a cheering smile, and his face grew bright.
"Dear old friend! I thought you were never coming to see me."