"What's the matter?" the latter asked.

"No man ever yet did a foolish thing without being found out," Raffle muttered. "Let's walk across the park where we can be alone, because there is something I must say to you. If you hadn't turned up yet, Mr. Harry, it would have been all right, but seeing you have turned up, why, it's all wrong and I am bound to tell you. When you went away, you left your affairs in a muddle. There was money coming to you from Weatherby's, though perhaps you didn't know it, and up to this year they have kept up your subscriptions to one or two races, the Derby amongst others. Oh, I knew it, and I am going to tell you now why I kept the knowledge to myself. The year you went away so sudden you nominated more than one colt for the Derby and, of course, the money was all right. Well, after you disappeared and they said you was dead, nothing seemed to matter and I thought no more about things. Sir George took over your 'osses, and it was only when this Blenheim colt began to shape so well that I began to ask myself a few questions. It was easy to bamboozle Sir George, because he is the worst man of business in the world. And I can prove every bit of it, sir; I can prove every word I am saying. And therefore it comes about that this Blenheim colt—this one that's going to win the Derby—belongs to you, or at any rate he was nominated in your name, which comes to the same thing. I daresay you will ask me why I have done this, and why I kept the secret, and I'll tell you. I really did it for the sake of Miss May. I would do anything for her, anything to put Sir George on his legs again. You see, I thought you was dead and out of the way and, after all said and done, I was doing nobody any harm by keeping my mouth shut. And yet now you have come back home again I feel a bit of a scoundrel."

"It seems incredible," Fielden exclaimed; "it is a strange discovery for a pauper to make."

"Well, sir," Raffle said doggedly, "there it is, and this wonderful chance is entirely in your own hands, pauper or no pauper."

CHAPTER IV
A GREAT TEMPTATION

AS yet Fielden could not realize it. The thing was so unexpected he found it hard to grasp Joe Raffle's meaning. He was too conventional to have much imagination. He had not thought it possible that fortune could have devised a method of restoring his old prosperity. But after the first shock of discovery it seemed feasible. Similar things had happened before, though, perhaps, not exactly on lines such as these.

And now the position of things as they were at the time he left was coming back to him. He had a vivid recollection of the night when he first stood face to face with ruin, when he knew that he had come to the end of his tether. For Harry Fielden had not drifted into a mess with his eyes shut. He had known that things were getting desperate and had staked pretty well everything on a certain race and his horse had lost. When things came to be settled up there was just enough to pay his creditors in full. He recalled how he sat down one night with pencil and paper and worked out the whole thing fairly and squarely. He had had friends to dinner that evening. It was daybreak before the last hand had been played and Fielden found himself alone to face the dreaded disaster.

How clearly it all returned to him now! He had not felt disposed to sleep, but had gone up to his room in the silent house and refreshed himself with a bath and changed his clothes, after which he had come down to the dining-room again. He had thrown back the curtains and opened the windows to admit the sunshine of a perfect day—the day of his ruin!

But he had done nothing to be ashamed of. He had not disgraced himself, and no friend or tradesman was the poorer for his rashness. So leaving his affairs to the family solicitors, he quietly vanished from the scene of his folly.