`Pooh, pooh, pooh! you women don't understand these things,' said uncle Glegg. `There's no way o' making it safe for Mr and Mrs Moss, but destroying the note.'

`Then I hope you'll help me to do it, uncle,' said Tom, earnestly. `If my father shouldn't get well, I should be very unhappy to think anything had been done against his will, that I could hinder. And I'm sure he meant me to remember what he said that evening. I ought to obey my father's wish about his property.'

Even Mrs Glegg could not withhold her approval from Tom's words: she felt that the Dodson blood was certainly speaking in him, though if his father had been a Dodson, there would never have been this wicked alienation of money. Maggie would hardly have restrained herself from leaping on Tom's neck, if her aunt Moss had not prevented her by herself rising and taking Tom's hand, while she said, with rather a choked voice,

`You'll never be the poorer for this, my dear boy, if there's a God above: and if the money's wanted for your father, Moss and me 'ull pay it, the same as if there was ever such security. We'll do as we'd be done by, for if my children have got no other luck, they've got an honest father and mother.'

`Well,' said Mr Glegg, who had been meditating after Tom's words, `we shouldn't be doing any wrong by the creditors, supposing your father was bankrupt - I've been thinking o' that, for I've been a creditor myself, and seen no end o' cheating - for if he meant to give your aunt the money before ever he got into this sad work o' lawing, it's the same as if he'd made away with the note himself - for he'd made up his mind to be that much poorer. But there's a deal o' things to be considered, young man,' Mr Glegg added, looking admonishingly at Tom, `when you come to money business, and you may be taking one man's dinner away to make another man's breakfast. You don't understand that, I doubt?'

`Yes, I do,' said Tom, decidedly. `I know if I owe money to one man I've no right to give it to another. But if my father had made up his mind to give my aunt the money before he was in debt, he had a right to do it.'

`Well done, young man! I didn't think you'd been so sharp,' said uncle Glegg, with much candour. `But perhaps your father did make away with the note. Let us go and see if we can find it in the chest.'

`It's in my father's room. Let us go too, aunt Gritty,' whispered Maggie.