The Argosy, Vol. 57

The Grey Monk by the author of The Mysteries of Heron Dyke opens this January 1894 installment of Argosy. In Chapter I, titled "Alec's Sentence," Sir Gilbert Clare, a proud baronet of Withington Chase, sits among his coin collection on a stormy October night. His eldest son, John Alexander Clare, has become a disappointment—a spendthrift and betting man who accumulated debts the baronet refused to pay. Now, on his son's twenty-fourth birthday, Alec arrives soaked and mud-covered, tapping at the study window. He confesses to losing heavily on a horse race and faces being posted as a defaulter within three days unless his father provides six hundred pounds. When Alec appeals to family honor rather than paternal sympathy, Sir Gilbert considers the proposition, ultimately agreeing to pay on undisclosed terms.