If, without costing myself or my family a shilling, I could put a thousand pounds into his hands to-morrow, I do not know whether I ought to do it.' 'You will remember my offer.' The doctor thanked him, and said that he would remember.

So the conversation was ended, and the doctor went about the ordinary occupation of his life, apparently without any settled grief at his heart.

He had done his duty by his son, and that sufficed,--or almost sufficed, for him.
Then came the mother's turn.

Could anything be sent to the poor lost one,--to poor Dick?
Clothes ran chiefly in her mind.

If among them they could make up a dozen of shirts, would there be any assured means of getting them conveyed safely to Dick's shepherd-hut out in the Queensland bush?
In answer to this Caldigate would fain have explained, had it been possible, that Dick would not care much for a dozen new shirts,--that they would be to him, even if received, almost as little a source of comfort as would be a ton of Newcastle coals.