"'I hope to pay this back within three months,' he said stiffly. 'It's not what I expected, but I can't afford to refuse it.'
"'Don't pay it back to me,' said Bertrand, who was beginning to feel rather ashamed of himself. 'Hand it on to someone else who's in a tight corner, and, when he's ready to pay it back, he can lend it to his next friend in distress.' Then a little bit of the old Adam peeped out, and he added, 'Remember it's a loan; you must tell the next man so and you've no idea how many men and women we shall save from ruin and suicide.'
"Well, Bertrand never expected to hear another word, but a year or two later, he received a letter of thanks from a young barrister, whose wife had had to undergo an operation; then from a doctor in Sunderland who hadn't known how to pay his rent; then from a girl who'd lost her father and wanted money to pay for learning shorthand and typing. The fifty pounds have been in circulation for about eighteen years, and from time to time Bertrand still gets a letter from some out-of-the-way corner of the world.... Of course, I'm living on charity now, but, when I was competing equally with my fellows, an odd fifty pounds might have come in very handy. That's what I mean by helping people at discretion."
"There's a difference between fifty-pounds and twenty-five million," I pointed out.
O'Rane smiled to himself and then shook his head.
"Not so much as you might think," he said.
"I wonder how you'd use it."
His face became slowly fixed and grim.
"I wouldn't let any boy go through what I've had to face," he murmured. "It may be fortifying for the character, but that sort of thing can be overdone. The Spartan youth who allowed a fox to gnaw his vitals ended up, I have no doubt, with an immensely fortified character but also with a grievously impaired set of vitals. You know, a boy without parents——"
He broke off and began to whistle to himself; then remarked unexpectedly: