Caldigate had stayed his hand in regard to Dick Shand simply because the affair had been one not of money but of drink.

'I suppose a man may be cured by the absence of liquor ?' 'By the enforced absence ?' 'No doubt they often break out again.

I hardly know what to say, sir.

If you think that money will do good,--money, that is, in moderation,--I will advance it.

He and I started together, and I am sometimes aghast with myself when I think of the small matter which, like the point on a railway, sent me running rapidly on to prosperity,--while the same point, turned wrong, hurried him to ruin.