"You had better leave your father alone, I think!" Foley struck in with a manner like the snapping of a trap. "And explain to Mr. Stanton the matter you mentioned to me yesterday."
"I was explaining it!" the clergyman rejoined. "I was saying that my father--he was at school with you, sir, you remember?"
"To be sure," the squire said, his grey whiskers curling with impatience as he looked from one to the other. "And at college."
"He lost money after my mother's death," the young man continued, "and went to live in Glasgow." In his shrinking from the disclosure he had to make his voice took a rambling tone as he added, "I think I told you that, sir."
"To be sure! Twice!
"But I did not tell you," the clergyman replied, driving his stick into the ground and working it about while his face grew scarlet--"and I take great shame to myself that I did not, Mr. Stanton--that my father was much----"
"Good heavens, Jones!" Jim broke out, his patience exhausted. "What on earth has your father to do with it? Yesterday you gave me to understand that you had some entanglement which weighed on your mind. And I thought that you had come here to make a clean breast of it. Instead of which--for Heaven's sake man, don't make me think that you are not running straight!"
The vicar glared at him, while the squire gazed at both. "But that old man," Jones said at last, almost at choking point by this time, "whom you saw this afternoon was----"
Jim struck in again savagely. "We do not want to know anything about him either. As for him, he is----"
"My father!"