YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE

By David Christie Murray

Author Of 'Aunt Rachel, ' 'The Weaker Vessel, ' Etc. 

I

Mr Bommaney was a British merchant of the highest rectitude and the mostspotless reputation. He traded still under the name of Bommaney, Waite, and Co. , though Waite had been long since dead, and the Company hadgone out of existence in his father's time. The old offices, cramped andinconvenient, in which the firm had begun life eighty years before, were still good enough for Mr. Bommaney, and they had an air of solidrespectability which newer and flashier places lacked. The buildingof which they formed a part stood in Coalporter's Alley, oppositethe Church of St. Mildred, and the hum of the City's traffic scarcelysounded in that retired and quiet locality. 

Mr. Bommaney himself was a man of sixty, hale and hearty, with a rosyface and white whiskers. He was a broad-shouldered man, inclining to beportly, and he was currently accepted as a man of an indomitablewill. There was no particular reason for the popular belief in hisdetermination apart from the fact that it was a favourite boast of histhat nothing ever got him down. On all occasions and in all companies hewas wont to declare that no conceivable misfortune could really breaka man of spirit. He confessed to a pitying sympathy for mealy-willedpeople (and everybody knew that Bommaney, in spite of his own strengthof mind, was one of the kindliest creatures in the world); but, wheneverhe met a man in trouble, he would clip him by the shoulder, and wouldsay, in his own hearty fashion, 'You must look the thing in the face, myboy. Look it in the face. I'd never let anything break _me_ down. '

Since his reputation for fortitude was as solid and as old-fashionedamongst the people who knew him as his business character itself, itwould have come as something of a shock upon any of his friends if hecould but have been seen by them, or any credible man amongst them, on acertain afternoon in the April of 1880. He had locked himself in his ownroom, and, sitting there in a big chair before a businesslike desk, witha great number of docketed papers in pigeon-holes, and a disordered massof papers strewn before him, the determined Mr. Bommaney, the decidedMr. Bommaney, the Mr. Bommaney whom no misfortune could subdue, wascrying, very feebly and quietly, and was mopping his rosy cheeks, andblowing his nose in an utter and unrestraining abandonment to trouble. 

There was another fact which would have come upon his friends with anequal shock of surprise if they could but have had it brought home tothem. The man who sat unaffectedly crying in the big chair in helplesscontemplation of the scattered papers was a hopeless bankrupt, and hadseen himself sliding towards bankruptcy for years. When men who knew himwanted business advice, they went to him by preference, and nobody cameaway empty. He knew the City and its intricacies like a book. He knewwho was safe and who was shaky, as if by a kind of instinct, and he knewwhere and when to invest, and where and when not to invest, as few mendid. 'You can't get at me, ' he would say; for, old-fashioned as he was, he used a little of the new-fashioned slang to give spice and vigour tohis conversation. 'There isn't a move on the board that I don't know. 'He advised his friends excellently, and there were perhaps half a scoreof fairly well-to-do speculative people who had to thank him, and himalone, for the comfort they lived in and the consideration they enjoyed. He had been wise for others all his life, and in his own interests hehad always acted like a greenhorn. He talked loudly, he spent freely, he paid his way, he expressed the soundest business maxims, and was asshrewd in detail as he was wise in generalities, and these things made anatural reputation for him: whilst he traded for years at the expense ofhis capital, and went steadily and surely towards the bottomless gulf ofinsolvency. Now he was on the very verge of it, and to-morrow he wouldbe in it. It lent a feeble sting to his sufferings to know how surprisedpeople would be, and how completely men would find him out. 

He had not very profoundly involved other people in his own ruin, but hehad gone a little farther than a man altogether brave, and honourable, and clearsighted would have ventured, and he knew that some would sufferwith him. He might have made arrangements to go a little farther stillif he had been courageous, clear-sighted, and dishonest, and might haveheld his head up for another matter too, perhaps. But he had lacked thenerve for that, and had never consciously been a rogue. He felt evennow a pride of honesty. He had been unfortunate, and his creditors wouldhave everything--everything. 

He thanked God that Phil's mother had tied her money on her only son, and that the boy at least had enough to begin the world with. How shouldhe face Phil when he came home again? How should he send the news tohim? The lad was away enjoying himself, travelling all round the worldwith a wandering Baronet, who owned a yacht and had an unappeasabletaste for the destruction of big game. He would have to surrender hisfashionable and titled acquaintance now, poor fellow, and begin theworld with a disgraced and broken frame to be a drag and hindranceto him. The more Mr. Bommaney thought of these things, the moreunrestrainedly he cried; and the more he cried, the less he felt able orinclined to control his tears. 

He wept almost silently, only an occasional sniff betraying his emotionto his ear. He had always held his head so high, and had been sobelieved in. It was very bitter. 

Whilst he was in the midst of this childish abandonment to his grief aset of knuckles softly and hesitatingly tapped the door from without, and directly afterwards a hand made a tentative respectful sort ofattempt upon the handle. 

'Who's there?' cried Mr. Bommaney, steadying his voice as best he could. 

'A gentleman to see you, sir, ' answered a smooth voice outside. 

Mr. Bommaney pushed back his chair, rose to his feet, and retiring to asmaller room consulted a little square looking-glass which hung uponthe wall above his washing-stand. His blue eyes were very tearful and alittle swollen, his cheeks and nose looked as if they had been scalded. 

'Wait a moment, ' he said aloud, and his voice betrayed him by a break. He blushed and trembled, thinking that Mr. Hornett, his confidentialclerk, would know how he was breaking down, and would speak of hiswant of courage and self-command hereafter. The reflection nervedhim somewhat, and he sluiced his face with water, making a littleunnecessary noise of splashing to tell the listener how he was engaged. He polished his face with the towel, and, consulting the mirror again, thought he looked a little better. 

Then he re-entered his business room, and turning the key in the lockopened the door slightly, a mere inch or two. 

'Who is it?'

'A Mr. Brown, sir, ' said the smooth voice outside. The clerk insinuateda card through the space between the door and door-jamb, and Mr. Bommaney took it from his fingers without revealing himself. He hadsome difficulty in making out its inscription, for his eyes were newlytearful, and, whilst he peered at it, a reflex of his late emotionsbrought a sniffling sob again. He was freshly ashamed at this, and saidhastily, 'Five minutes' time. I will ring when I am ready. Ask the gentleman towait. '

Mr. James Hornett softly closed the door, and stood on the landing withlong lean fingers scraping at his lantern jaws. He was a little man, short of stature, and sparely built. His skin was vealy in complexion, and he had wiry hair of a russet-red. Even when he was clean shaven hisfingers rasped upon his hollow cheeks with a faint sound. His nose andchin were long and pointed, and his manner was meek and self-effacingeven when he was alone. There was a tinge of wonder in his face, at warwith an habitual smile, in which his eyes had no part. 

'Something wrong?' he said, under his breath. He went creeping softlydown the stairs. 'Something wrong? Mr. Bommaney in tears? Mr. Bommaney!'

Could anything have happened to Mr. Phil? That was the only thing Mr. Hornett could think of as being likely to affect his employer in thatway. 

Now Mr. Hornett had been in his present employ for thirty years, manand boy, and he was human. Therefore, when at the expiration of alittle more than five minutes' time Mr. Bommaney's bell rang, he himselfushered the visitor upstairs, and in place of retiring to his own pewbelow stairs, lingered in a desert little apartment rarely used, andthen stole out upon the landing and listened. He was the more promptedto this because the visitor, who had a bucolic hearty aspect, and wasvery talkative, had told him downstairs that Mr. Bommaney and himselfwere old friends and schoolfellows, and had been in each other'sconfidence for years. 

'I am afraid, sir, ' Mr. Hornett had said, when the visitor firstpresented himself, 'that Mr. Bommaney may not be able to see you atpresent. He gave orders not to be disturbed. '

'Not see me?' said the visitor with a laugh. 'I'll engage he will. 'And then followed the statement about his old acquaintanceship with Mr. Hornett's employer. 

If there were anything to be told at all, it seemed not unlikely thatthis visitor might be the recipient of the intelligence, and Mr. Hornettlingered to find if haply he might overhear. He heard nothing thatenlightened him as to the reasons for his employer's disturbance, butheard most that passed between the two. 

Bommaney had succeeded in composing himself and in washing away thetraces of his tears. Then he had taken a stiffish dose of brandy andwater, and was something like his own man again. He received hisvisitor cordially, and in his anxiety not to seem low-spirited was alittle more boisterous than common. 

'I'm busy, you see, ' he said, waving a hand at the papers scatteredon the desk, and keeping up the farce of prosperous merchandise to thelast, 'but I can spare _you_ a minute or two, old man. What brings youup to town?'

'I've come here to settle, ' said the visitor. He was a florid man withcrisp black hair with a hint of gray in it, and he was a countryman fromhead to heel. He seemed a little disposed to flaunt his bucolics uponthe town, his hat, his necktie, his boots and gaiters, were of socountrified a fashion, and yet he looked somehow more of a gentlemanthan Bommaney. 

'Yes, ' he said, 'I've come to settle. ' He rubbed his hands and laughedhere, not because there was anything humorous and amusing in histhoughts, but out of sheer health and jollity of nature. Bommaney, still distrustful of his own aspect, and afraid of being observed, satopposite to him with bent head and fidgeted with his papers, blindlypretending to arrange them. 

'To settle, ' he said absently. Then, rousing himself with an effort, 'Ithought you hated London?'

'Ah, my boy, ' said his visitor, 'when you're in the shafts with a whipbehind you, you've got to go where you are driven. '

'Yes, ' said Bommaney mechanically, 'that is so. That _is_ so. '

The visitor was laughing and rubbing his hands again in perfecthappiness and self-contentment, and had no eye for Bommaney'sabstraction. 

'Yes, ' he said, 'it's Patty's doing. I've sold up every stick and stone, and I've taken a house in Gower Street. Do you know, Bommaney, ' headded, with an air and voice suddenly serious and confidential, 'thecountry's going to the devil. Land's sinking in value every year. I'vebeen farming at a growing loss these six years, and rents don't come inas they used to do. I got my chance and I took it. Lord Bellamy wantedto join the Mount Royal and the three estates. My little bit o' landlay between 'em, and I sold it to him. Sold it, too, begad, as well as Icould have done half a dozen years ago. '

Then he laughed once more with great heartiness, and unbuttoning hisovercoat, groped in an inner pocket. After a struggle, in the courseof which he grew very red in the face, he drew forth a pocket-book ofunusual dimensions, and slapped it on the desk so vigorously that hiscompanion started. 

'I got a tip the other day, ' he went on; 'that old bank at Mount Royal, Fellowes and Fellowes, is going to crack up, my boy. There's somethingvery queer in the commercial atmosphere just now, Bommaney. There arelots of old-fashioned solid people breaking up. '

To Bommaney's uneasy fancy there was in his visitor's voice an accentwhich sounded personal. 

'I--I hope not, ' he answered, somewhat feebly, 'so much depends----'(he tried hard to rally himself), 'so much depends upon a spirit ofcommercial confidence. '

'Exactly, ' cried the visitor, laying hands' upon the pocket-book andopening it. 'I went to the bank and saw young Fellowes myself. "Lookhere, Fellowes, " I told him, "I want my daughter's money. " He stuck toit, sir; like a dog holding on to a bone. He growled about it, and hewhined about it, said it wasn't fair to withdraw the money on shortnotice. Said I couldn't do better with it anywhere, and at last I toldhim, "Look here, Fellowes, I shall begin to think by and by there'ssomething wrong. " He went as red as a turkey-cock, begad, and drew anote on their London agent like a lord, and here I am with the money. Eight thousand pounds. '

By this time he had drawn a bundle of bank-notes from the pocket-book, and now sat flicking the edges of the notes with the tips of his greatbroad fingers. Bommaney heard the crisp music, and looked up with amomentary glance of hunger in his eyes. 

'That's Patty's little private handful, ' the visitor continued, openingthe packet of notes, and smoothing it upon his knee. 'Eighty notes ofa hundred. Pretty little handful, isn't it? They don't look, ' he added, with his head reflectively on one side and his eyebrows raised a little, 'they don't look as they'd buy as much as they will. '

Bommaney tried to find a commonplace word by answer, and an inaudiblesomething died drily in his throat. When his companion began to speakagain, the bankrupt merchant wondered that he made no comment on hisghastly face--he knew his face was ghastly--or his shaking hands. Therewas an intuition in his mind so strong and clear that he trembled at itsprophecy. 

'Patty, ' said the visitor, 'will have everything in time, and a prettygood handful, too. But she's bent on being independent, and she wants tohave her own money in her own hands. She pretends it's all because shewants to pay her milliner's bills, and that kind of thing, herself; butI know better. The fact is'--he lowered his voice and chuckled--'thefact is, she doesn't want me to know how much she spends in charity. Youlook here, Bommaney'--the merchant's heart seemed to stand still, andthen to beat so wild an alarum that he wondered the other did not hearit The intuition multiplied in strength. He heard beforehand the spokenwords, the very tones which marked them. 'You're a safe man, you're asmart man. I suppose there isn't anybody in London who can lay out moneyto more advantage than you can. I know it's a great favour to ask, butI think you'll do it for Patty's sake and mine, if I do ask you. Takethis, and invest it for her. Will you, now?'

He stood up with the bundle of notes outstretched in his hand. Themerchant rose and accepted it, and looked him, with a sudden curiouscalm and steadiness, straight in the face. 

II

Mr. Bommaney was alone again, and if it had not been for the actualpresence of the bundle of bank-notes upon the table, he could well havethought that the whole episode had been no more than a dreadful anddisturbing dream. It was very hard, he thought complainingly, that a manshould come and put so horrible a temptation in his way. He would notyield to it--of course he would not yield to it. He had been an honestand honourable man all his life long, and had never so much as felt amonetary temptation until now. It was humiliating to feel it now--itwas horrible to have his fingers itching for another man's money, andhis heart coveting it, and his brain, in spite of himself, devisingcountless means of use for it. It was quite unbearable to know thatthe money _might_ tide him over his troubles and land him in prosperityagain, if he could only dare to use it, and risk engulfing it with thelost wreckage of his own fortunes. 

But no, no, no. He had never meant to use it. His only reason foraccepting it had been that he had not found the courage to declare histrue position to his old friend and school companion. Perhaps, he toldhimself (trying to silence and cajole that inward monitor and accuserwho would not be silenced or cajoled), perhaps if Brown had been lessconfident and truthful--if he had had less faith in his old companion'spowers as a man of business--it would have come easier to tell thetruth. And how futile a thing it was to stave off discovery for a singleday! How doubly ashamed he would have to feel after that poor pretenceof responsible solidity! If he had only been disposed to be tempted atall--here surely was an added reason for yielding to temptation. 

Obviously the first, and, indeed, the only thing to be done, was tobank this money in Brown's name, and so have done with it; and yetany feeling of haste in that respect would seem to imply a fear oftemptation, which he was, of course, quite resolute not to feel. He wasnot going any more to run away from his own suspicion of himself thanhe would have run from another man's. So, in and out, and up and down, contradicting himself at every turning, with an underlying surety in hismind so fast rooted and so dreadful that he did not dare to look at it. 

When the adieux were being said between the old friends, Mr. JamesHornett had slid noiselessly downstairs, his mind inflated by pride. He was not proud of having played the eavesdropper, for even in Mr. Hornett's economy of things, that was an act to be proud of; but he wasvery proud, indeed, to be associated with a gentleman so magnificentlyrespected as Mr. Bommaney. There were not so very many people, hetold himself, even in the City of London, which was full of wealth andprobity, into whose hands so large a sum would be placed with so littlea sense of the necessity of precaution. He felt as if he himself hadbeen treated in this majestic manner, and the feeling warmed his heart. He bowed Mr. Brown from the office door with an _empressement_ which hefeared a moment later might almost have betrayed him, and he went abouthis duties for the rest of the day in a mood of unusual contentment. Theearlier memory of his employer's disturbance crossed him sometimes, andalways excited his curiosity; but the later feeling dominated him. Hewas delighted by his association with a concern so eminently respectableas that of Bommaney, Waite, and Co. 

Meanwhile Mr. Hornett's employer, with that dreadful rooted secret inhis mind, which he did not dare to look at, sat alone, looking withstaring eyes before him, and drumming in a regular tune upon the topmostnote of the terrible little pile. He had locked the notes away beforeBrown's departure, but they had seemed to draw him to the safe withalmost a physical compulsion, and he had brought them out again to lookat them, to handle them, to count them, to resolve in his own mind thathe did not hanker after them, and was honourable to the core. It was sonew a thing to be tempted, that at times his own self-deception was madeeasy to him. It did not occur to him to reflect that the need and themeans had never so presented themselves together until now, or that hislife-long honour had depended upon their absence. 

When he had sat in silence for a while he awoke to the fact that theinterview had been nothing but a succession of shocks to him, and thathe was bodily exhausted. He rose, and, walking feebly to the inner room, applied himself anew to the brandy bottle he kept there. He had gonemuch too often to that deceptive solace lately, and he knew it; but eachsuccessive visit carried its own excuses with it, and it had never inany individual instance been worth while to resist a habit which it wasalways easy to condemn in the main. 

The brandy enlightened him and opened new sluices of emotion. Perhapsfor the moment he was a better man because of it. He seemed to wake to amore determined sense of the enormity of the temptation which lay beforehim. He thought of his own son, and a shadow took him from head tofoot as, in a brandified nervous vision, he beheld some shadowysupposititious creature in the act of telling the tale to Phil. The viceof drink has had the creation of many other vices laid to its charge, but for once in the world's history the obfuscated vision was clearerthan the natural, and Philip drunk a better man, and a more righteousand honourable, than Philip sober. 

At bottom, Philip Bommaney knew himself too well to be at all sure thatthis phase of feeling would endure with him; and in a half-consciousdread of the return of that baser self, whose first appearance inhis history had so affrighted him, he hurriedly attired himself forout-of-doors, crammed the bundle of notes into an inner pocket of hisovercoat, and, after a final appeal to the decanter, left his room witha somewhat hysteric sense of courage and self-approval. He had beentempted--he was ready to recognise that the temptation was over, that hehad well-nigh succumbed to it--but he had triumphed! He was a man again. He had been weighed in the balances and not found wanting. There weresome tears in his eyes compounded of brandy and nerves and affectionsand remorses as he hurried into the street. Phil should never be ashamedof his father. Old Brown, who had trusted him like a brother, shouldnever learn to shun and hate him. He had to go under--the thing wasinevitable, unescapable, but he would at least go under like a man. Hisheart beat to the tune of the 'Conquering Hero, ' where it might havebeat to the 'Rogue's March, ' but for that friendly nip of brandy and theall-covering mercies of Heaven. 

Quickly as his resolution had been taken, he had fully arranged for thedetails of the task which lay before him. With the notes he had thrustinto his pocket a little handful of business papers involving a knottyand delicate point of business, and he intended that the discussion ofthe point they raised should act as the prelude to the disclosure andthe restitution he desired to make. He could not, even in his newfoundheroism, and with whatever hysteric hardihood he was prepared to meetthe stroke of fate, he could not as yet encounter Brown, and lay barebefore him the plot of the melancholy farce he had played an hour ago. But there was an old friend of his, and an old friend of Brown's intothe bargain, a solicitor, keen as a needle and kindly as sunshine, oneBarter, whose business chambers were in Gable Inn, and who was of allmen the man he could confide in with least shame and best hope of help. He hailed a cab, and bade the driver drive his fastest. Gable Inn laytranquil, the afternoon shadows already settling deeper on the littlequadrangle than on the broad and roaring thoroughfare without. Therewas no light in the windows of the rooms in which Messrs. Fellowship, Freemantle, and Barter had done business and received their clientsfifty years ago, and in which the sole surviving member of thefirm still maintained its old-established reputation for honour andastuteness. 

Bommaney was chilled by the silence and darkness of the rooms, and heshivered to see the temptation he had conquered looming again beforehim. He knocked loudly with a trembling hand, and the noise of ironon iron went rolling and echoing up the staircase and came back in ahollow, lonely, sounding murmur from the rooms within. His heartsank, and a horrible fear of himself got hold of him. He had actuallyconquered, and here was the fight to be fought over again with almosta certainty of defeat at the end of it. Indeed, the defeat in that baremoment of time had grown so certain, that he was conscious of a distinctstate of disappointment when a sudden footstep within the rooms answeredhis noisy summons. 

The door opened, and a young man stood before him, peering at him withhalf-closed uncertain eyes through the dark. He was a young man of thefleshly school, something too stout for his years, very pallid, and morethan commonly personable, with a fine broad forehead, fine frank eyes, and features modelled with an engaging regularity. When he recognisedhis visitor his pale and handsome face glittered with a sudden smileof welcome, teeth and eyes gleaming quite brightly, and the whole facelighting up in the pleasantest and friendliest fashion conceivable. 

This agreeable expression faded into one of almost mechanical dolor, andthe personable young man shook hands with Mr. Bommaney sadly, and sighedas if he suddenly recalled an idea that sighing was a duty. 

'Come in, Mr. Bommaney, ' he said. 'Come in, sir. I have sent home allthe clerks, and was just about to lock up for the night. To what do Iowe the pleasure of this visit? Let me light the gas. '

Bommaney, the door being closed behind him, stumbled along the darkenedpassage after the more assured and accustomed steps of young Mr. Barter, and the inner office being gained, and the gas being lighted, allowedhimself to be motioned to a chair. What with having been too muchagitated by the contemplation of his troubles to be able to eat at allthat day, and what with the fight he had had with his temptations, andthe too frequent applications he had made to the brandy, it happenedthat for the moment he was by no means certain of his purpose. He satfor a little while wondering rather hazily what had brought him there. As often happens with absent-minded people, his hands remembered whathad been required of them before his brain began to act again, and byand by the fact that he had unbuttoned his overcoat, and had taken abundle of papers from his pocket, recalled him to his purpose. 

'I wanted, ' he said, emerging from his haze, and holding the bundle ofpapers nervously in both hands, 'I wanted to see your father upon veryspecial and urgent business. '

'My father?' the young man answered, with a look and accent of painedsurprise. 'Do you mean to say, sir, that you haven't heard the news?'

'The news?' cried Bommaney, feeling blindly as if some new misfortunethreatened him. 'What news?'

'My father, sir, ' said young Mr. Barter, with a certain blending ofprofessional airs, something of a legal impress mingled with somethingof the manner of a medical man conveying mournful intelligence to therelatives of a patient, 'my father, sir, was struck down by an omnibusin the street this morning. He is terribly injured, and not expected torecover. '

'God bless my soul!' Bommaney cried out. His chin fell upon his breast, and his eyes stared at the floor, seeing nothing. He felt like a manupon a raft, who sees the bindings of the frail thing break apart. Shipwrecked already, and now the last hope gone! He hardly knew, if hecould have asked himself the question clearly, why he so particularlydesired to see Barter. He hardly knew what Barter could have done forhim, except to listen to his troubles and take charge of the eightthousand pounds which tempted him, and yet the disappointment seemed asheavy and as hard to bear as anything he had hitherto endured. He satstaring forlornly before him, with tears in his eyes, and young Mr. Barter, in much astonishment at his susceptibility and tenderness, satwatching him. Something slid from Bommaney's hands with a rustle, anddropped upon the floor. Young Mr. Barter made a mere hint or beginningof a movement, as if he would have picked it up for him. Bommaneymade no movement at all, but stared before him with his blue-gray eyesfilling more and more with tears, until two or three brimmed over andtrickled down his cheeks. He said, 'God bless my soul!' once more, mechanically, and restored what remained of his bundle of papers to hispocket. Young Mr. Barter looked with one swift and vivid glance from thefallen bundle to his guest's face, then back again. Bommaney rose fromhis seat, buttoned his overcoat with awkward and lingering fingers, andput on his hat. He was evidently unconscious of his own tears, and madeno attempt to disguise them, or to wipe them away. He said, 'God blessmy soul!' a third time, and then, shaking young Mr. Barter by the hand, murmured that he was sorry, very sorry, and so went stupidly away. Young Mr. Barter accompanied him to the door, casting a strange backwardglance at the papers as he left the room, and was curiously voluble inhis dismissal of his visitor. Anything he could do--Mr. Bommaney mightrest perfectly assured--the clerks would be back to-morrow in anycase--he would advise Mr. Bommaney of his father's condition by thatnight's post--he himself was naturally most profoundly anxious. In thiswise he talked Bommaney from the chambers, and when once he had closedthe door behind him, went back along the dark little corridor withan unnecessarily catlike tread. He could hardly have been other thancertain that he was alone, yet when he reached the inner room he lookedabout him with a keen quick darting suspicion, and for half a minuteignored the fallen papers on the floor. 

'Dear me!' he said, when at length he suffered his eyes to rest uponthem. 'What can that be? How did that come here?'

He stooped, picked up the papers, laid them upon his desk, and smoothedthem out, making a fold lengthways to counteract the creases into whichthey had already fallen. He saw a crisp clean Bank of England note for ahundred pounds, and, lifting it, found another. Then he lifted half thebundle, and, finding a note of the same value, gave an inward gasp, andexpelled his breath slowly after it. Then he looked at the last noteof all, and sat down with the whole bundle in his hands. His pale andfleshy features had taken an unusual colour, and his breathing was agood deal disturbed. A watcher might have guessed that he was profoundlyagitated from the swift unintermittent rustle the paper made in hishands. He seemed to sit as steady as a rock, and yet the crisp paperrustled noisily. 

Mr. Brown's bank-notes had been a fruitful source of emotion that dayalready, and, in Bommaney's mind at least, had raised very dreadfuldoubts and perplexities. There were doubts and perplexities in the mindof young Mr. Barter, but they were altogether of another order. YoungMr. Barter was perfectly aware that he was being tempted, and felt that, in its way, the temptation wets a kind of godsend. He even said as muchin a low murmur to himself. His perplexities related to other thingsthan the fear of any fall from honour. Bommaney had evidently been veryqueer. Bommaney had been horribly cut up about something, even beforehe heard the news the young solicitor had to give him. But was heso disturbed as to be likely to forget where he had last secured soconsiderable a sum of money? This mental inquiry naturally set young Mr. Barter to work to discover how considerable the sum of money actuallywas. He laid the notes upon the table, and tried to wet his thumb uponhis lips. There was no moisture there, and his mouth was as dry astouchwood. He drank a little water, and then began to count the notes. He made them eighty-one at first; and then, recounting, made themseventy-nine. Counting them a third time, he made them eighty. 

'Damn it all!' said young Mr. Barter, 'can't I count? I suppose the oldbuffer will come back for them. ' He tried a fourth time, and confirmedhis third counting. 'They'll get stopped at the Bank, ' he said. 'They'llbe no use to anybody. ' He sat for a while thinking, with his eyeshalf-closed, drumming out a tune upon the table with the tips of hisfat white fingers, then he folded the notes with great precisionand delicacy, put them into his pocket, found his hat, overcoat, andwalking-stick, and made ready for the streets. In the quiet of theselegal chambers many chance noises from without had from time to timebeen clearly audible. He heard now a hurrying step upon the pavement ofthe quadrangle, and, with a palpitation at the heart, he moved swiftlyto put out the light, and listened. The step stumbled at the entrance tothe staircase, at the foot of which the outer door stood closed. YoungMr. Barter's heart beat, if possible, faster than before; and the veinsin his head so throbbed, that only the confining rim of his hat seemedto keep his head itself from bursting. There came an eager summons atthe door, an imperative rapping with the head of a stout walking-stick. He set his teeth, and, drawing back his lips with a horrible smilein the dark, breathed noiselessly. The rapping grew more and moreimperative and urgent, and then came a preternatural silence, with anundercurrent of distant sound in it, and the sudden blare of a cornet inthe street, which sounded to his nerves like the trumpet of the heraldof the day of judgment He heard the hurrying feet plunge down the stepsagain, and cross the quadrangle, and listened until their sound mergedinto the dull noises of the London night. He stood in the dark afterthis for what seemed a long time, learning that his features twitched, and teaching himself to control them. Then he left his chambers withgreat secrecy, and broke into a cold sweat to think, as he stood halfthrough the doorway, how narrowly he had escaped from slamming thedoor behind him. This was an act which might have been suicidal inits stupidity; for to give any sign of his presence there after thatthundering summons at the door would have been to betray himself beyondredemption. He inserted his latch-key noiselessly, and, crouching toescape imagined observers, drew the door gently after him, and turnedthe key slowly in the lock. As he did this he heard a footstep and acough together close at hand, and, turning with a start, beheld a paleand slender man of brief stature, who scraped his lantern jaws withapologetic thumb and finger, and looking at him with a startledmeekness, as if he would fain propitiate anger for a possible intrusion, sidled to the foot of the stairs, mounted the stairway with a backwardglance and a second cough of apology, and so disappeared. 

Young Mr. Barter, with his nerves already shaken by this small episode, walked into the main thoroughfare and merged with the crowd, bearingMr. Bommaney's eight thousand pounds with him. When he had walked for awhile he hailed a cab, and was driven home. He had, or prided himself onhaving, an exceptional eye for horseflesh, but it was not his facultyin this direction which had led him to choose a cab horsed by a bruteof unusual symmetry and swiftness. This was an accident, but, like otheraccidents in this perplexed world, it served its purpose. It landed himat the paternal door in Harley Street almost at the instant at whichBommaney arrived there in pursuit of him. 

Now, although young Mr. Barter had not calculated on meeting Bommaneyso soon, and although the meeting was naturally something of a shock tohim, he had already schooled himself for interview and inquiry. He wenta little paler than common as he grasped his father's old friend by thehand for the third time that evening, and trembled ever so little as hespoke. 

'I half expected to find you here, ' he said. 'I could see how moved youwere by the news of my father's illness. ' The door stood open, and theold-fashioned man-servant within had been in the act of closing it uponBommaney's retreating figure when cab number two had driven up, and theyoung master of the house had alighted from it. 'Is the news worseor better?' He laid both hands upon Bommaney's arms as he put thisquestion. 

The elderly servitor, who had never had reason given to him to believethat young Mr. Barter was above the reasonable attached to his father, was a little surprised to see the young man so moved. He drew the doorgently after him, and came out upon the steps. 

'I'm afraid, Mr. John, ' he murmured sympathetically, 'that it'spractically all over, sir. The poor gentleman's quite unconscious, andthe doctor don't expect him to last till morning. '

Young Mr. Barter's mind was active, and accustomed to rapid movement. Heknew at once that the old servant read the signs of disturbance inhis face and manner, and how far he misread them. So, to insure themisreading, he took out his handkerchief, and groaned at this melancholyintelligence. 

'I----, ' began Bommaney, stammering and speaking a little thickly, 'Ididn't come to ask about your father. ' Young Barter's heart atthis, though he was perfectly prepared for it, began to beat like asledgehammer. 'I've had a dreadful loss. I have called nowhere but atyour office since I left my own, and I have lost eight thousand pounds. I am convinced that I must have left it there. '

'I can't think so, Mr. Bommaney, ' said Barter, with a face ofinnocence. ' We can go back together, if you like, and look for it. 'Bommaney's driver lingered for him; the other cabman was alreadyjingling leisurely down the street. 

'Johnson, ' said young Barter, addressing the domestic, 'you hear whatMr. Bommaney says. This is a matter of the most urgent importance, andmust be looked into at once. Tell my mother that I have been home, andthat I have been called suddenly back on urgent business. ' Bommaneystood in a kind of stupid trance, and the young man, taking him by thearm, had some ado to secure his attention. 'Come! Come, sir, ' he said;'we will look into this at once. You must not remain in suspense aboutsuch a matter. '

They rustled together through the straw which had been laid down uponthe roadway, and had been scattered by the feet of passers-by upon thepavement, and, mounting the cab, drove in a ghastly silence for a scoreof yards, and then, with a clatter which made conversation difficult, Bommaney, rousing himself at intervals, shouted his certainty thatthe notes would prove to have been left at Barter's chambers. Barter, growing curiously inured to the circumstances of the case, shouted backthat he dared to say they would be; that it was very likely; that hereally did not see where else Mr. Bommaney could possibly have leftthem, furtively pressing the notes against his breast meanwhile, andonce, at a quiet interval, when Bommaney had sunk into his formerstupor, venturing to steal a hand to the pocket in which the stolenmoney lay, caressing the edges of the notes with the tips of hisfingers. 

'I'm sure, ' said Bommaney, as the cab pulled up at the gate of thequadrangle, 'that we shall find them here. ' He spoke with a tremulousuncertainty, and so obviously appealed for a confirmation of his hope, that Barter felt constrained to answer, 'Oh, we are bound to find them. '

The striking of a wax vesta at the door of the chambers, the shaky huntfor the key, the well-known obstinacy of the lock, the opening ofthe door, the fevered working of Bommaney's fingers, and the flushedeagerness of his face, were all memorable to young Barter for many andmany a day. They entered together the room in which their interview hadtaken place; and Barter, nursing the remnant of the flaming vesta, litthe gas with it, and then, dropping it on the floor, set his foot uponit, and looked at his companion. 

'Where do you think you left the notes, sir?' he asked. 'Have you anyidea? I think you took out some papers here. You wanted to consult myfather about them, I fancy, and, if I remember, you returned them toyour pocket. '

Bommaney stood looking about him on the floor, trailing the point ofhis walking-cane purposelessly hither and thither; and it was at thismoment, seeing how confused and broken his victim seemed, that young Mr. Barter tasted the first flavour of safety. 

'I don't see anything, ' he said. 

'Did you, ' Bommaney asked him, with both trembling hands grasping theknob of his walking-cane, and shaking in appeal before the unsuspectedthief--' did you lock any papers away before you left?'

As a matter of fact, young Barter had not had any papers to lock awaythat evening after Bommaney's departure; but he thought the trick worthplaying, and, producing his keys again, opened the heavy iron safe whichstood against the wall. 

'Yes, ' he said, with an air of hopeful alacrity. 'By Jove, I did!' Hestood aside, with an outstretched hand, and motioned Bommaney to examinethe contents of the safe. There was a parchment there, there were halfa dozen bundles of documents tied in pink tape and docketed; but therewere no bank-notes. 

'You know, ' said Bommaney, with a fretful wail, 'I must have left themhere; I couldn't have left them anywhere else. I put it to you--couldI?'

Barter looked at him mournfully, with raised eyebrows. There was just ahint of expostulation in his raised eyebrows, and in the expression ofhis voice. 

'You see, sir, ' he said, waving his white hands--' you see for yourself, there's nothing here. '

Bommaney walked to a chair, and, sitting down there, lifted up his voiceand wept. 'I've been an honest man, by God! all my life long; and nowI'm not merely ruined, but I shall be taken for a thief. ' He criedbitterly after this outburst, with his head between his hands. His hatfell off, and his walking-stick tumbled noisily to the floor. Mr. Barterpicked them up, and, having set them on the table, looked at the shakingshoulders, and listened to the ruined man's sobs and wailings. It was apity--of course it was a pity--but young Mr. Barter really did not seehow it was in his power to help it. 

III

On a chill spring evening the sunset over London gave a brief radianceof colour to the dull gray roof and smoke-stained chimneys of manythoroughfares. Shadows thickened in the eastern skies as if fold afterfold of finest crape were drawn over the field of watery and opalescentlight the fallen sun had left behind it. In one great thoroughfarerunning east and west the sky-line of the houses stood distinct, andbathed in light of many colours; whilst down below there was a wall ofshadow. Two parallel walls of shadow rose from a shadowy level, and thedusk had a thousand indistinguishable voices. 

The shadowy lines became accented by twin rows of flickering fire, therear jets seen with a blurred halo of mist round each of them, the halocrawling feebly within itself, tormented by a feeble wind. The longvista of pavement became chequered like a chessboard, with patches oflight from shop windows. Gable Inn, staring at the growing darkness witha single fiery eye, looked like a Rip Van Winkle. It had been old whenChaucer and the knights and ladies of whom he sang were young; andits hoary stunted angles and squat chimney cowls had the grave andimpassive aspect proper to great age. It has stood there now for overseven hundred years hoarding a growing store of secrets. It is roughlypicturesque in every detail, and its every chamber is a triumph ofnarrowness, obscurity, and inconvenience. 

In the quadrangle the shadows climbed the sturdy walls as if they werean exhalation from the paving-stones. The dim staircase sent down allmanner of muffled and echoing voices. Footsteps sounded, and the clangof doors, and the shriek of unwilling keys in rusty locks, andthe hurrying traffic of the street without, softened by the moistatmosphere, was like the fading echo of following feet upon the stairs. 

Lights sprang up in the basement windows, telling of protractive legallabours. Lights twinkled in the garrets, telling of lonely study ornoisy conviviality in the coming hours of darkness. At length one sideof the quadrangle viewed by a solitary watcher from a third-floor windowof the opposing side, winked with a hundred windows through the wet airand deepening shadow like a blear-eyed Argus. 

This watcher, lounging at his own window, was Mr. Philip Bommaney, recently self-entitled the 'Solitary of Gable Inn. ' He waseight-and-twenty years of age or thereabouts, a broad-shouldered, deep-chested, manly-looking fellow, with curling brown hair, and a faceexpressive of pugnacity, good-humour, and many capacities. He was alittle weary now, after a long day of satisfactory work. He watched themounting shadows, and listened to the weird gamut of the wind amongthe telegraph lines, until the outer voices made his own dull room seemhomely. One ruddy tongue of flame from the expiring fire in thegrate played on the narrow walls and low ceiling, and woke twinklingreflections in the spare and battered furniture. A man's dwelling-placeis always an index to his character when its arrangement depends uponhimself; and signs of Philip Bommaney's nature and pursuits were visiblein plenty here. There were symmetrical rows of books on the shelvesflanking the fire-place. An orderly stack of newspapers occupied onecorner of the room, and a set of boxing-gloves lay on top of the pile, and a pair of dumb-bells beside it. A shaded reading-lamp stood upon thetable in the midst of a great litter of papers. The barrels of a hugeelephant gun flashed dimly from the wall as the firelight played uponthem, and two or three lighter weapons were ranged together lower down. 

He turned from the window and lit the lamp, and, wheeling round, heldup the light to a photograph, and studied it with a pleased face. It wasthe portrait of a pretty girl, very sweetly grave, and looking as if itcould be very sweetly vivacious. When he had looked at it for a longishtime he nodded and smiled, as if the pictured lips had actually spokento him. There was a tumbler standing beside the photograph with a bunchof hothouse flowers in it, the one bright spot of colour in the dingychamber. He took this in his disengaged hand, and nodding and smilinganew at the pretty girl's portrait, he turned about again, and walkedinto a bedroom beyond a narrow and inconvenient little window. Thestrident voice of the clock over the entrance of the old Hall, answeredor anticipated from multitudinous spires in the City far and near, sounded as Philip entered his bedroom. He stood and listened, countingsix jarring strokes. The bedroom was a microscopic apartment, with asmany corners in it as any room of its size in London, and the bed itselfwas a perfect triumph of littleness, so tucked under the sloping roof, and so surrounded by projecting corners, as to make the entry to it orthe exit from it a gymnastic performance of considerable merit. The roomwas not over-light at the best of times, the fourth part of the spaceof one small window in the sloping wall was filled by its own heavyframework, and for half its height it was shielded by a parapet, whichhad at least its uses in hiding the occupant of the room from thetoo-curious observation of those who dwelt in the upper stories of thehouses opposite. These houses opposite, compared with Gable Inn, areof a mushroom modernness, and yet are old enough (having begun witha debauched and sickly constitution) to have fallen into an almostcomplete decrepitude. Their stately neighbour seems to be less grimywith the London smoke than they are, has always been less susceptible tooutside evil influences, even of that unescapable sort, and drives themto an added shabbiness of senility by contrast with its own hale oldage. The bedroom window was already open for the admission of such freshair as, disguised in London blacks, the exhalations of moist springpavements, and the reeking odours of the cuisine of Fleeter's Rents, might choose to wander thither. Philip, with the lamp in one hand andthe tumbler of flowers in the other, put out his head and looked intothe squalid depths below him, and having gazed there a while absentlyand with no object, drew back with a vague touch of pity upon him forthe people who dwelt in so much squalor so near to healthy effort andreasonable competence. He could hardly have told as much, perhaps, butone pallid countenance, shining very dimly at an open window, was verymuch answerable for that vague touch of pity. The face in the darknessstarted away from the window as he looked at it, as if his ownrobust health and the light that dwelt about him startled its pinchedshabbiness into solitude. He set the tumbler of flowers upon thewindow-ledge, and closing the window, made his toilet and returned tothe sitting-room. Then, having banked up the fire, and set the matchesin such a position that he could easily find them, he blew out the lamp, left his chambers, and ran down the tortuous stairs. As he turned thelast corner a door clanged noisily, and the next thing of which he wasconscious was that he was struggling in the embrace of a stranger whomhe had doubled up in an angle of the wall. 

'I beg your pardon, ' he said gaspingly; 'I stumbled. '

'You did, ' responded the stranger, gasping also. 'Rather heavily. It waslucky you had something soft to fall on. '

Philip began to make apologies. The stranger, breathless still, butjovially polite, begged him not to mention it. He was a tallishyoung man, broad set, and a little too fleshy for his years. He had acleanshaven face, healthily pallid, the whitest of teeth, and a mostfrank, engaging, and contagious smile. 

'Pray don't say anything more about it, ' he said in answer to Philip'sreiterated apologies. 'You are not hurt, I hope?'

'No, thanks; but I'm afraid you are. '

'Not at all. It was sharp for a minute; but I am all right now. Thestairs are very inconvenient, especially to strangers. '

'I haven't even that excuse for my clumsiness, said Philip; 'for I amliving here. '

'Indeed; then we are neighbours, and should know each other. Rather aninformal kind of introduction, eh?' The stranger said this with a mellowlaugh and a flash of his white teeth. He opened his overcoat ashe spoke, and produced a card-case, Philip catching the gleam of agold-studded shirt-front as he did so. 'That's my name, John Barter;and these are my offices. ' The outer oak, cracked and blistered to thelikeness of an ancient tar-barrel, bore an inscription, dim with longyears--'Fellowship, Freemantle, and Barter'--and the names were repeatedon the doorpost at the entrance. 

'I have no card, ' said Philip, accepting the stranger's. 'My name isBommaney--Philip Bom-maney;' Mr. Barter's smiling face was unchanged, though he gave a slight but perceptible start at the name, and repeatedit. 

'Do you know it?' asked Philip. To the ears of his companion there wassomething of a challenge in the tone. 'It is not a common name. '

'No. Not a common name. I think I have heard it somewhere. '

They were under the archway by this time, in the brief shelter of whichthe sanguine-faced, red-waist-coated lodge-keeper was taking his nightlyconstitutional. They answered the touch of the hat with which he salutedthem. 

'Which is your way?' asked Mr. Barter. 

'Westward, ' said Phil. 

'Mine is east, ' said Barter, 'so we part here. We are bound to meetagain before long. Good-night. '

'Good-night, and many thanks for taking my clumsiness in such goodpart. '

Barter's ready smile beamed out again. They shook hands before partinglike old acquaintances, and Philip walked on, through the incessantnoise of Holborn into quieter Bloomsbury Street, along the eastern sideof Bedford Square, where the bare trees were shivering in a bath of fog, and into Gower Street. Half way down that hideous thoroughfare he cameupon a house, one of the few which still retain the old lamp-iron andextinguisher before their doors, and knocking, was admitted by a trimmaid, with the smiling alacrity due to a frequent and favoured visitor, and by her conducted to the drawing-room, where sat a young lady engagedin a transparent pretence of being absorbed in a novel. The pretencevanished as the door closed behind the handmaiden, and the young ladyjumped up and ran forward to meet him, with such a glad welcome in herface as answered the appeal in his own. It does not need that we shouldlook at her with Philip's eyes to pronounce her charmingly pretty, orto admire the face, at once shy and frank, with which she nestled besidehim. 

'I thought you were never coming, ' she said. 

'Am I so late, then?'

'It seemed so, and now you are come, tell me what you have been doing. '

'Working, and thinking of you. '

'You work too much, Phil. ' She did her best to ignore the second itemof his day's occupation, but the deepened flush and her avoidance of herlover's eyes answered it more effectively than words could have done. 'You are getting quite pale and thin. No wonder, sitting all alone allday long in those musty old chambers. '

'Well, you see, Patty, the more I work, the sooner I shall cease to beall alone. ' The flush deepened again, and the hand trembled in his likea caught bird. 'And as for working too much, I don't believe that'spossible. Work never killed anybody yet, and idleness has killed a goodmany. It's better to work than sit still and wait for briefs which nevercorns. There's no sensation more delightful than that of looking at agood day's work, and thinking that every line and word has brought menearer to you. '

His tenderness conquered her shyness, and she nestled closer still, looking up at him with a wholehearted admiration and affection. He felta little sad and unworthy under it, as almost any honest fellow wouldhave been sure to do, and yet it was wonderfully sweet to him, and morethan reward enough for any effort. 

'I wish I could help you, Phil. I wish I could do something for you, when you have given up so much for me. '

'Hush!' he said, laying his hand lightly upon her lips. 'We made up ourminds long ago that no more was to be said about that. ' He was tenderstill--he could be nothing else with her--but there was a touch ofsternness in his manner, too--as if the theme pained him. 

'But I can't help thinking of it. It was so noble of you, Phil. '

'It was the only thing to be done--the only thing possible. It was----'he paused for a second, and then went on resolutely--'it was my father'sact by which you suffered. I should have been a scoundrel if I had doneotherwise. '

'And are you to do all? and am I to do nothing? It is selfish to keepall the generosity to yourself. '

He laughed as if he found this female paradox a pleasant fancy, but shewas not to be put off so. 

'If the subject pains you, as I know it does, dear, please understandwhy I speak of it I don't want you to think I take your sacrifice as youpretend to take it. It isn't a matter of course, as you pretend it is;and you may say what you like, Phil, but it isn't a thing that everybodywould have done. Don't grudge me my gratitude; you did it for the loveof me. '

'I didn't do it for the love of you, ' said Phil, laughing tenderly; 'howoften am I to tell you that, you little mountain of obstinacy? I did itbecause it was the right thing. I don't say, mind you, that it wasn'teasier to do it for you than it might have been for somebody I didn'tknow or care for; but that--as you will see quite clearly if you'llbring your naturally logical mind to bear upon it--makes the thing somuch the less creditable, provided there was any credit due to it atall. '

The loving feminine scorn of this masculine process of reasoning wasexpressed in a single glance, and was delightful to see. 

'It only means waiting a little longer before I claim you. '

The girl would fain have asked, 'Why should you wait when I have enoughfor both by your gift? What does it matter which of us it is who has themoney--you or I?' But this question went unspoken, for obvious reasons. A woman is tongue-tied by the countless conventionalities of education. She must often let her thoughts lie silent in her heart, though sheburns to express them, and find what answer she can to questions shedare not offer. Philip had repaired her loss by beggaring himself. Thatwas noble. But now he persisted in deferring their marriage, and hadburied himself in that lofty sarcophagus in Gable Inn, resolved only toclaim her, though she was all his own already, when he had reinstatedhis fortunes by his labour. That was noble also, perhaps, but in herown heart she thought it a trifle foolish--say Quixotic, not to be toosevere. She would rather have seen his ardour find a more commonplaceexpression. She had a general sort of belief that whatever Philip didwas bound to be right, and yet this actual experience rather jarred withthat assumption. 

They found other themes in a while, and talked of the future and thehappiness it would bring. That Philip was going to be rich and famouswas a prime article in Patty's creed, and he himself, though he hadsoberer hopes, was not likely to miss any chance of success which labourmight bring him. He was more than modest enough in his conception of hisown powers, and was often doubtful as to the fulfilment of the higherambitions which are the necessary fuel of all artistic fires. Withoutthose fires the chill of modesty will fall to the frost of cowardice, and in Art cowardice means indolence. In his moments of exultation--andthese came generally at their strongest when he was in his sweetheart'ssociety--success looked easy enough. The memory of her undoubtedbelief in him came upon him often with a glow reflected from thosemagnificently hopeful moments. But then at times of depression it grewto look no more than a foolish unattainable dream. All young artistshave times when they are going to be great--when the glory proper towhite hairs makes a halo round un-wrinkled fronts and curls, brownor golden. They have times when the smartest turn of verse, the mostdelightful inventions of narrative, the most exquisite contrast ofcolour or mould of form their genius can compass are stricken throughand through with the horror of commonplace. But when a man of theartistic _genus_ has once so far learned his own nature he has made agreat advance towards the fulfilment of his ambitions. He has tolearn that just as the hot fit is followed by the cold the cold fitis succeeded by the hot. He knows how intermittent he is. He learns tomistrust his own mistrust of himself. The periods of depression growless frequent, and the depression grows less lasting. And then, justas the cold fit becomes less chilling to the one, the fit of exultationgrows less intoxicating. The halo beams less bright--loss near. 

Yet Philip, with the girl's eyes worshipping him, and her sweet voicecooing hope and praise, and her hands knitted on his shoulder, and herwarm breath fanning his cheek, gave himself up to the vision, and felthis heart warm with a world's welcome as yet far away from him. 

The prose of life will assert itself, even to visionary eight-and-twentyand sweet eighteen in love with one another. On this occasion it cameas a summons to supper. The summoner was a stout and jovial elderlygentleman, about whose somewhat commonplace British exterior there was, to Philip's mind, a reflection of the nimbus which glorified Patty tohis mind, for he was Patty's father. He had been called Old Brown atschool when he was young--he had been called Old Brown in the country, and the prefix had found him out in town without the need for anybodyto breathe a whisper of it. He was Old Brown to his new acquaintances inLondon before a month had gone by. The name suggests a beverage which isnot unlike Old Brown himself--being mild and nutty to the taste as heto the mental palate--ripe and genial. He had a moist twinkle of theeye, --the look which bespeaks the kindly humorist, --and his slightlyprotruding under lip seemed covertly to taste the flavour of unspokenjokes. Old Brown's jokes were mainly left unspoken, but he spent agood part of his life in laughing without any very apparent reason forlaughter, and may have been internally the way he looked to be. 

He shook hands with Philip, and chucked Patty under the chin with awaggish aspect, which called an appealing blush into the girl'sface. Perhaps the blush stayed the intended quip, but any way the oldgentleman contented himself with a beaming laugh, and led the way to thesupper table, rubbing his hands and chuckling. 

The meal was quietly jovial, and if, after it, Old Brown was not quiteso fast asleep as he pretended to be, at least his patience gave thelovers the shelter they needed. He snored in mellow murmurs from behindhis bandanna, and they sat and talked together in low tones lest theymight awaken him, until the time came for parting. 

Outside the mist had given place to a dull persistent rain, and apeevish wind was complaining in area and chimney cowl. Philip turned tothe street with a pleasantly haunting vision of Patty's vivacious faceoutlined against the warmth and brightness of the hall. The touch of hergood-night kiss lingered on his lips like live velvet, and he carriedwarmth and brightness enough within him to defy all the rain that everrained, and all the wind that ever blew on smoky London. 

The rain had cleared the streets, and the occasional gleam of apoliceman's cape or a furtive figure seeking the shelter of a doorwayagainst the drifting showers was all he saw as he bored his way againstthe rising wind to the corner of Holborn. He was so absorbed by thatfancy of music to which his own quick tread kept time that a shufflingstep behind him rapidly drawing nearer failed to reach his sense. But ashe came to the corner, a hand clutched his arm. 

He turned, with the quick defensive gesture natural to a man so accostedat such a time, and faced the unexpected figure. An old man, clad infilthy fluttering rags, stood staring at him, with both hands stretchedout. The rags shook as much with the horrible cough that tore him aswith the cruel wind. He was a dreadful creature, with watery eyes, and ahead and moustache of dirty gray. His long and unvenerable hairs strayedloose beneath the dunghill relic which crowned them. The rain was in hishair and beard, and had so soaked his tattered dress that it clungto him like the feathers of a drenched fowl. He shook and wheezed andpanted, and gripped the air with tremulous fingers, and through therents in his clothing his white flesh gleamed in the gaslight. 

The look of surprise and pity which Philip bent upon this uncleanapparition was startled into one of sudden fear and horror. In thevery instant when these emotions struck him, they were reflected in theother's face. The man made a motion to run, but Philip clutched his arm, and he stood cowering and unresisting. 

'You! Here in London?'

'Phil, ' said the spectre imploringly, 'for God's sake help me. I didn'tknow it was you, when I followed you. I thought----' his voice trailedinto silence. 

'You have come to this?'

'Yes, Phil; this is what I've come to. ' The cough took him here again, and tore him so that he was fain to lean against the shutters of a shopnear at hand. 

'Why do you come back here? Are you mad?'

'I am--almost. What could I do? I'm as safe here as I am anywhere. Who would know me? or, if they did, who would hurt a wretch like me?I haven't slept in a bed for weeks, Phil. I haven't eaten a morsel forthree days. For God's sake! give me some money. I'll--I'll go away; I'llnever trouble you again. '

'I'll give you all I can. But you must go away from London. '

Philip thrust his hand into his pocket and brought up all the pocket'scontents. He took his keys and an unvalued trifle or two from thehandful, and held the rest out towards his father. The old man shrunkfrom him with a terrible appeal and shamefaced gratitude which cut theson's heart like a knife. 

'Where can I go to?'

'Anywhere out of London. You are not--safe here. Go away. Write to mehere. ' He thrust an envelope on which his name and address were writteninto the old man's dirty trembling hand. 'You must never come to see me. Promise me that. '

'I promise, ' he said; and, thrusting the money and the envelopesomewhere among his rags, stood silent for a while. 'I'm afraid, ' hesaid, 'I acted very foolishly and very----'

Then his voice trailed away again. 

'God help you!' said Philip with a choking voice. 

'You'll shake hands, won't you, Phil? 'said the old man. Phil took theproffered hand. 'It's something, ' said Bommaney the elder, clingingto him, 'to feel an honest man's hand again, God bless you, Phil!--Godbless you!'

Philip stood silent, and the old man, with another shame-stricken glanceupon him, moved away. His son watched him for a second or two, as heslunk, coughing and shivering, along the gleaming pavement, and thenturned and went his own way heavily. 

Bommaney senior, discerning the welcome beacon of a public-house, shuffled eagerly towards it, hugging beneath his rags the money his sonhad given him. 

'I beg your pardon, Mr. Bommaney; if you please, sir. ' He started atthe sound of a voice which had been familiar to him for years. 'I shouldlike a word with you, sir; if you please. '

IV

James Hornett was less changed than his old employer, but it was evidentthat he too had fallen upon evil times. For a mere second the familiartones of his voice were no more than familiar to Bommaney, whose mindwas confused by long misery and hunger and sleeplessness, and the shockof his late encounter. But when he turned and saw Hornett's long thumband finger scraping at his stubbly jaws, the gesture and the attitudeof apology brought him back to mind at once. Hornett's coat sleeve wastorn, and showed his arm half way down to the elbow, but revealed nohint of linen, The collar of his frock-coat was buttoned tightly abouthis neck, and there was a sparkling metallic rime upon his cheeks andchin and upper lip. Bommaney was ashamed before him, and afraid of him, and only some faint reminder of self-respect and the pride of earlierdays held him back from the impulse to run away. 

'You're not afraid of me, sir?' said James Hornett. He had alwayssmiled, and was smiling even now. The smile was no more than acontortion of the muscles of the face, which made a long mirthlesscrease on either cheek, and left the eyes untouched by the least lightof sympathy. It gave him a propitiatory dog-like look, and there was ahint of fawning in his attitude which matched it perfectly and carriedout the likeness. 'You remember me, sir?' he went on, for Bommaneystared at him so wildly that there seemed room for reasonable doubton that point. 'Hornett, sir. James Hornett Your faithful servant forthirty years, sir. ' Bommaney looked at him with haggard watering eyes, and said nothing as yet 'It's a bit of a surprise, sir, at first, isn'tit?' Hornett went on, with his unchanging smile. There was a good dealof hunger and even triumph in his small soul, but they found no otheroutward expression, and his attitude and voice were as apologeticand retiring as of old. 'It was rather a surprise to me, sir, when Irecognised you. Isn't it a little dangerous for you to be here, Mr. Bommaney?'

They both started, and each looked about him at this mention of thefugitive's name. 

'Hush!' said Bommaney. 'Don't call me by that name. Come away fromhere. '

A policeman strolled along the street, with an echoing tread, and asthe two slunk past him he turned a casual glance upon them. The glancetouched them like a galvanic shock, and they would have run if they hadhad courage for such an indiscretion. 

'What do you want with me?' asked Bommaney, when the policeman wasout of sight and hearing; Hornett walking beside him, with his lean, propitiatory fingers at his chin, looked up with hesitating meekness. 

'Well, you see, sir, ' he responded, 'your fall was mine, sir; I wassupposed'--he coughed behind his hand here to indicate apology forthe introduction of a theme so necessarily disagreeable to the other'sfeelings--' I was supposed, sir, to have been in your confidence. I mademany applications for employment, and nobody would employ me. Young Mr. Weatherall, sir, promised, personally, that if I called again, he'd kickme down the steps. '

Bommaney groaned. 

'What do you want with me?' he asked again. 

They were standing by this time outside the doors of a public-house, andthe wind-driven rain was pelting down heavily. 

'I thought, sir----' said Hornett; 'I'm very hard pressed, sir. ' Thedog-like, propitiatory smile never varied. 'I was following Mr. Philmyself, sir, in the hope that his kindness might run to a trifle. '

'Come in, ' said Bommaney; and Hornett eagerly accepting the invitation, they entered the house together. There was an odour of frying in theroom, and a hissing noise proceeded from a soft of metal caldron whichstood over a row of gas-jets on the pewter counter. A printed legend, 'Sausage and Mashed, 3d. ' was pasted on the wooden partition at theside of the box they entered, and on the mirror which faced them, anddisplayed their own squalid misery to themselves. A year ago the farewould have seemed uninviting to either at his hungriest moment, but nowBommaney called for it with a dreadful suppressed eagerness, and, thebarman serving them with a tantalising leisure, they watched everymovement with the eyes of famine. 

'I've got a little place, sir, of my own, ' whispered Hornett, when thepangs of hunger were appeased. 'It's very humble, but you could put upfor the night there. ' Bommaney made no answer, but the two set out againtogether through the rain, and, pausing once only for the purchase of aflat pint bottle of whisky, made straight for Fleeter's Rents. 

All that nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand of the manythousands who pass it every day could tell you of Fleeter's Rentsis that it makes a narrow black gash in the walls of the greatthoroughfare, and that it neighbours Gable Inn. It is slimy in its veryatmosphere all winter through, and its air in summer time is made ofdust and grit and shadow. The old Inn elbows it disdainfully on oneside, and on the other a great modern stuccoed pile overtops it witha parvenu insolence. It is the home naturally of the very poor; forno hermit or hater of the world, however disposed to shun his fellows, would hide in its dingy solitudes whilst he had but a mere shilling aday for lodging and bodily sustenance elsewhere. 

Hornett led the way up a set of narrow and broken stairs, and havingreached the uppermost story of the house, pushed open a broken door, which, depending from a single hinge, scratched, noisily upon the unevenflooring of the room. His guest stood shivering in the doorway until amatch sputtered and fizzed in Hornett's fingers. Then, guided by thatprecarious light, he advanced. Hornett lit a candle which adhered by itsown grease to the filthy wall and had already made a great cone of smokewith a tremulous outline there. There was a small grate, with a meredouble-handful of shavings, chips, and coal behind its rusty bars. Hornett applied the match to the shavings, and, as the fire leapt up, the two men knelt together, coughing and choking in the smoke, andbathing their chilled hands in the flame. Bommaney drew the flat bottlefrom a pocket hidden somewhere in his multitudinous rags, and drank. Hornett watched him greedily, with hands involuntarily and unconsciouslyextended. Then when he had drunk in turn, they each shivered overthe fire again, stealing furtive glances at each other, each mightilydisconcerted when he met the other's eye. Bommaney had aged dreadfullyduring his year of hiding, and Hornett, who had drunk his employer'shealth upon his birthdays often enough to know his age to a day, couldyet scarce believe that the dreadful spectre who knelt beside himnumbered less than fourscore years. 

One question perplexed Hornett's mind. How came it, he asked himselfover and over again, that in the space of a mere twelvemonths a man whostarted with at least eight thousand pounds could have fallen into sucha depth of poverty? Eight thousand pounds, if absolutely nothing weredone with it for its own increase, meant royal living for a scoreof years for an unencumbered man. Hornett longed to satisfy his owncuriosity upon this point, and felt as if he dared not ask the questionfor his life. He framed a score of ways by which he might approachit, with a road of retreat behind him, and at last, as if in spite ofhimself, he said, with apologetic impudence, 'You don't seem to have made the money last long, sir. '

'The money, ' cried Bommaney, turning furiously upon him. 'What money?'

Hornett edged away upon his knees, and his thumb and fingers traced thecreases of his smile up and down his stubbly cheeks. 

'Do you think, ' the old man demanded passionately, 'that I took away apenny?'

Hornett was afraid to rise. There was such a despair and so much fury inthe other's looks that he could do nothing but crouch at his feet withhis mean meek face turned fearfully towards Bommaney, and his bodycowering. 

'You think I took that eight thousand pounds?' Bommaney quavered, with avoice of bitter disdain. 

He had never in his life regretted anything so profoundly as he hadregretted his resistance of that temptation. To have had all the blameand shame, and to endure all the miseries a convicted thief might earnfor himself, to have been an outcast and a pauper, only because hehad been resolute against temptation! It is easy enough for a man whomcircumstances keep honest to think himself honourable beyond the chanceof temptation. But misery has the virtue of Ithuriel's spear, with adifference. As the one touched the beast and transformed him to theseeming of a high intelligence, so will the other touch a seeminglyimpregnable armour of bright honour, and turn it into tinder, leavingthe poor beast revealed and unprotected from his own base naturallongings. The poor Bommaney was maddened to think he had not done whatthe other's thoughts charged him with, even though he passionatelyrebelled against the accusation. 

'When did you ever know me to be a rogue, James Hornett?' he asked, withan air and voice to which his passion lent something like dignity. 'Whendid you ever know me defraud a man of a farthing?'

'Never, sir, I'm sure, ' Hornett responded, not doubting in his own mindthat Bommaney was guilty. 'But----'

'But what?' cried Bommaney. 'My own son, my own flesh and blood, wouldhardly shake hands with me. My clerk--I took him out of the gutter, _you_ know that, Hornett! I took you out of the gutter and made a manof you, and lavished kindness on you. Nobody has a minute's trust inme--nobody thinks of misfortune or disaster. I was right to run away andhide myself, for nobody would have believed me if I had stayed and toldthe truth. '

Hornett looked more frightened than before after this outburst, butBommaney read incredulity in his face, and answered it with an addedpassion. 

'What good would it do me to tell lies to you? Suppose I made youbelieve me, am I such a fool as to, think your pity could set me on mylegs again?'

He turned away, moved by his own wrath and anguish, and Hornett, rising, made himself as small as he could in the corner beside the grate. Bommaney, in his pitiful broken boots, went shuffling up and down theroom. 

'What became of the money, sir?' the clerk asked with a shaky voice. 

He was ready to run for his life, and he was more than half afraid thatthe old man was mad--his eyes blazed so, and his voice and gestures wereso tempestuous. 

'It was lost, ' said Bommaney. 'I lost it, Heaven knows how. I've thoughta thousand times, ' he said, through his clenched teeth, 'that that youngBarter must have had it. '

'Young Barter, sir?' said Hornett. 

Then Bommaney told all he knew of the story of his own loss, and at acertain point in the narrative Hornett started and made a step forward. He remembered the night well enough--he had reason to remember it. Anappointment for the theatre that evening had led him to call upon abrother clerk in Gable Inn, and he had seen young Mr. Barter leaving hischambers in what had struck him at the time as being an odd and stealthyfashion. He had remarked it for the moment, and had forgotten itafterwards, as men forget a thousand things of the sort which haveno interest personal to themselves. But now he saw young Mr. Barter'sfigure with a singular distinctness, and the face turned round in thegaslight was again as visible as it had been at the moment. He thoughthe read a meaning in it now. But for this slight confirmation ofhis employer's story he would probably have disbelieved it, but theaccidental character of the clue weighed with him, an apparent touch ofromance in it gave it a value beyond its merits. 

'Could you tell me, sir, ' he asked, 'exactly what time it was when youleft Mr. Barter's office?'

'No, ' said Bommaney, suddenly weary after his outburst ofself-exculpation, 'I don't know. It was after banking hours. It wasdark; he had to light the gas. What if I could? What would that have todo with it?'

'Well, you see, sir, ' Hornett answered, 'I'm not likely to forget thatevening. Of all the evenings of my life, sir, I made a call at Gable Innmyself, sir, at Number One. If young Mr. Barter had found the noteshe wouldn't care to face you again, and he mightn't have answered yourknock at the door, though he might have heard it. '

'Any fool could tell me that, ' said Bommaney roughly. 'What do youmean?'

'I've noticed, sir, ' said Hornett, with marked humility, as if heapologised for having said anything, 'that young Mr. Barter is agentleman who goes about in rather a large way, and noisy way, sir. He'sa biggish man, as it is, and to look at him at first you'd fancy that hewas bigger than he is. He talks very loud and cheery, sir, and he bangsthings about a good deal. '

'Well?' said Bommaney, irritated by these slow preliminaries, 'whatabout it all?'

He could see that his late clerk was leading to a point of some sort, and listened with a growing impatience. 

'He was leaving his rooms that night, sir, ' said Hornett, 'as sly as acat. I was just on the ground-floor of Number One as he was lockingthe door behind him. Locking it, don't you see, sir, ' said Hornett, beginning to be fired by his imagination, and speaking eagerly, 'so asnot to make a noise in pulling it to behind him. I suppose I made somesort of a noise in going behind him, but any way, he looked up at me--Ican see him now!' he cried, with a swift conviction, 'as if he was hereat this very minute, white and cowardly. That's what he was, sir. Whiteand cowardly, I can see him now. '

Bommaney grasped him by the wrist. 

'Do you remember the time?' he asked, passing one hand confusedlythrough the tumbled and disgraceful old locks of his hair. 'Do youremember when I left the office? Do you remember when you left it?'

'Almost directly, sir, after you. But you drove, sir, and I walked. Istopped, and had a little conversation with a friend, and just a socialglass that might have kept me back five minutes, sir. I was going todine with Mr. Marshall (White and Fielding's Mr. Marshall, sir) beforethe theatre. '

Bommaney released his wrist, and dropping on his knees before the fireagain, warmed his hands absently and stared into the blaze. 

'The notes were all hundreds, James, ' he said, after a pause. 'Theywere stopped at the Bank, I know, because I saw the advertisement. Itwouldn't be easy to get rid of them. '

'There are ways and means, sir, ' said Hornett. 'They'd have to bedisposed of at a loss, of course--a heavy loss--and kept quiet for aconsiderable time. '

'Have you heard of any of them coming into circulation?' asked Bommaney. 

'I haven't been in the way to hear of anything, sir, ' the clerk answeredmournfully, 'but, ' with a sidelong look at his old employer, 'if I couldonly get to look a bit respectable, I could make inquiries in an hour. Ihave no doubt I could find out, sir. '

'My boy believes I'm guilty, like the rest, ' said the old man, moaningand shivering and coughing again. The passion of his protest and thewarmth of heart which Hornett's returning confidence had taught himhad all died away, and he was his bankrupt, disgraced, and broken selfagain, old and maudlin, and strickenly conscious of his miseries. 

'Phil might help me, ' he said shakily. 'He 'could, but he won't. He'sgot plenty of money. If I'd been a rogue, James Hornett, ' and there heflashed up again, ever so little, 'I could have robbed my own flesh andblood with safety. A rogue would have done it. I was his sole trustee, and I could have had nine thousand by a stroke of the pen at anyminute. '

'Mr. Phil, sir, ' said Hornett 'Mr. Phil hasn't got much money left'

'Why not?' the old man asked, staring round at him with his watery eyes. 

'He paid Mr. Brown the eight thousand in full, sir, and divided therest, as far as it would go, amongst the poorest of the creditors. '

Bommaney turned back towards the fire, and drooped there. He seemed veryimpassive under this intelligence, but he was deeply moved by it allthe same. The sense of his son's high feeling of honour gave him akeen throb of pride, and then he thought bitterly that his own ill-luckpursued his offspring. 

The loss was double. It had disgraced and ruined him, and had robbed hisson of his inheritance. 

'Hornett, ' he said, 'James Hornett. '

'Yes, sir. '

'I was brought up, ' the old man said, in a muffled voice, advancing andretiring his hands before the fire, and chafing them automatically, 'Iwas brought up by Christian parents. I never did a dishonourable act inall my days. I have been a God-fearing man and a--a steady church-goer. I give it all up. I renounce it. I don't believe in God. I don't believein religion. I don't believe in being honest. It's a--it's a vile wickedworld, Hornett, and it's my belief the devil rules it. '

'Oh, sir, ' cried Hornett, ' you mustn't talk like this, sir. You mustexcuse me speaking free, sir, but I can't stand by and hear you talklike that. I can't listen to it, sir--I can't really. I've never saida disrespectful word to you, Mr. Bommaney, but I really must speak outnow, sir. It isn't respectable, sir, to talk like that. '

After this there was a long silence, and Bommaney, who had repouched thebottle after his last application to it, consulted it again, and handedit wordlessly to Hornett, without looking at him. 

'Phil might, ' he murmured in a while--' he might be brought to believeme. He's an honest man himself, James--a very honest high-minded manindeed. I must look where he lives, ' he murmured, seeking for theenvelope his son had given him. 'He gave me his address. '

'His address, sir, ' said Hornett. 'You could almost lay your hand onhim. He lives there. That's his window with the light in it. ' Bommaneymoved to the window, and followed with his glance the direction ofHornett's outstretched finger. There was a window a few feet higher thanthe one at which he stood, and half-hidden from observation by a stoneparapet. A shadow obscured the light, and moved about the ceiling, visible from below. 

'I saw him there to-night, sir, ' said Hornett 'I saw his face at thewindow. He put a glass of flowers outside. That's his shadow movingabout there now. '

'Phil!' groaned the wretched father, straining his dirty wasted handstogether. 'Phil!'

'I'm not the figure, sir, ' said Hornett, 'to call upon a gentleman likeMr. Phil; nor yet are you, sir, if you'll excuse my saying so. But ifyou'd let me go, sir, and put the case to him, he might come and seeyou here, sir, and you might set yourself straight with him, sir, whichwould at least, ' the seedy man added, somewhat moved by the old man'stears and tremblings, 'be an advantage to a father's heart. '

Bommaney stood in silence, looking upward. The moving shadow settleditself upon the ceiling in a huge silhouette, distinctly traceable. There was no doubting it was Phil's dear head that threw the shadow, himself invisible, so near, so far. The foolish outcast's heart achedbitterly, and he stretched both hands towards the shadow, not knowingthat he moved. 

'Shall I venture, sir?' asked Mr. Hornett, more moved than ever, andcoughing to clear a little huskiness in the throat. 'Shall I venture, sir, to look in on Mr. Phil in the morning?'

'Yes, go, James, ' said Bommaney, sobbing outright by this time. 'Perhaps--perhaps he may believe me. '

V

When young Mr. Barter took time to think about things, he began, for more reasons than one, to be sorry. It is necessary for the duedevelopment of this history to go back a little, and to take up Mr. Barter on the day following the commission of his crime. The young manfelt that he was unable to afford candour, and discreetly avoided thenaming of his own action. Eight thousand pounds is a sum which mostpeople would find tempting. Young Mr. Barter would never have found ittempting in the criminal way (though, if he had given his mind tothe consideration, he could at any time have seen how enviable itsunencumbered possessor might be) if he had not at the moment felthimself under considerable pressure. Mr. Barter's fleshy and well-formedfingers were somewhat too familiar with the feel of cards. These fingersof his were peculiarly dexterous to look at, and had even an unnecessarybraggadocio air of dexterity when he was engaged in his favouriteoccupation. Experienced people watched his shuffling and dealing withgreat care. In Mr. Barter's frank and engaging countenance, and in thatready smile in which the faultless teeth shone so conspicuously, therewas no hint of danger to the most unwary. Even the wariest, listeningto his genial mellow laughter, and seeing the jolly shoulders shake withmirth, were inclined to think him a loyal honest-hearted fellow. Hisloud swagger, his frank rollicking gait, his hail-good-fellow-well-metshake of the hand, the other hand clapped upon the shoulder, the noisygreeting, and that unfailing smile, not merely disarmed suspicion, butmade the mere fancy of it impossibly absurd. But young Mr. Barter hadaccustomed himself to associate with people whose experiences had forcedthem to be observant, and to these the dexterous caressing fingers withwhich he manipulated all instruments employed in games of chance seemedto justify a fairly constant watchfulness. The fingers handled the cardsas if they loved them, as if they had been accustomed to them from thecradle. The tips turned back a good deal, and the nails hooked a littleforward. There were little bulbs of tact at every tip, the hands weremade for a gambler, and could by no possibility have belonged to anybodyelse. 

The chief ground for the young man's sorrow may be very easily andbriefly stated. The packet which the unfortunate cruelly-temptedBommaney had let fall in his half-drunken abstraction on the floor ofyoung Mr. Barter's private room was made up exclusively, as we knowalready, of notes for one hundred pounds. 

Now Bank of England notes for one hundred pounds, though valuable, andeasily enough employed in all civilised countries when honestly come by, are only to be got rid of when dishonestly acquired at great risk andloss. A note for a mere five pounds may pass through scores of handsbefore being stopped at the bank. Tens, so the experienced in suchmatters will tell you, are a little difficult. Twenties are inquiredinto rather carefully. Fifties are positively dangerous to handlein this way. Hundreds are, except after great lapse of time, almostimpossible; and as for a thousand, a man might almost as well steal awhite elephant as a bank-note of that value, except that it will costhim nothing for keep, unless you count the tremor of soul and nerve, which is surely worth something, in which a man criminally possessed ofanother's property is almost certain to live. 

Mr. Barter, then, had eight thousand pounds in ready money, was liable, if discovered, to penal servitude, and was unable to touch a farthingof his ill-got gains. There are many men in the world, the world'sexperience proves it hourly, who set so small a price upon theirself-respect, that they will sell it for a shilling, for a drink, fora word. But there is hardly any man so lost to the natural human desirefor self-approval that he will actually give away his self-respect fornothing. Now this absurd transaction young Mr. Barter, when he took timeto think about things, appeared to himself to have made. 

He was not, and never had been, a great reader; he gave up his mind topursuits which he found more attractive than the tranquil fields andlanes of literature. Yet he remembered, in a dim sort of way, eitherthat he had read somewhere in his schoolboy days, or that a fanciful oldnurse had told him, a story of a person somewhere, who, being possessedof a great chest of money, went one day to look at it, and foundthat his hard cash had changed to withered leaves. Precisely such atransformation had overtaken that eight thousand pounds, at the momentwhen it had fallen from the hands of a man who might have made an honestuse of it. The fable was, and was not, true, so far as he remembered, and his fancy dwelt curiously about the history. There was nopossibility of turning back the withered leaves to gold, and making themjingle and glitter again as only one's own ready money can jingle andglitter. But, useless as these crisp and rustling leaves of paper wereto him, they held still all their old potentialities, and in the handsof honest men or courageous rascals each leaf might still transmuteitself into a hundred golden emblems of sovereignty and power. He wasneither that honest man nor that courageous rascal, and the money grewto be a sort of devilish tantalising fetish to him. Before he had ownedit a fortnight, he had felt a hundred times he could have burned it outof the exasperation of mere spite against it. 

He heard, of course, of Bommaney's flight, and of the failure of theold-established business house. People talked about these things agood deal for a time, and he himself listened to and took part in manyspeculations as to Bommaney's whereabouts, and the means he would taketo get rid of the notes and make them available for his own purposes. He found it at first a little trying to the nerves. There was nothing, since Bommaney had accepted his own disgrace and run away, to connectyoung Mr. Barter with the lost eight thousand pounds, yet it took muchcourage, and a considerable amount of inward spurring, to bring himselfto talk about the business. When a man carries a secret of a quiteharmless nature, it happens often, as almost everybody knows, thatcasual words and quite innocent glances startle him with hints ofunderstanding and participation. What is it when the detection of thesecret involves open shame and penal servitude? Can a man of genuinecourage be a thief? Is not courage after all at the very bottom of allmanly honour, of all sound honesty, all true self-respect? How shall athief be other than a lurking cur, whose whole soul, such as it is, is bent to a mean suspicion that he is suspected, a continuousterror-stricken watchfulness, a sleeping and waking dread of an awfulhand-clap on the shoulder? There are constitutional differences inthieves, no doubt, as there are in other people, but the key-note of thedishonest man's whole thought is fear. When, after a day or two, youngMr. Barter had accustomed himself to speak of Bommaney and the losteight thousand, and had often spoken of them, he began to look outfor suggestions that might be useful to himselt He even led the way attimes, and speaking to solicitors and barristers of extensive criminalexperience, he asked often, for example, how could a scoundrel get ridof such a clumsy handful? Why didn't the fool cash the notes, he wouldask contemptuously, before he left town, and before he was suspected?Everybody knew of course that the notes had not been presented, andtheir numbers were advertised in all the daily papers. Now what could afellow do who had them, by Jingo? What _could_ he do? There was noway open, so far as young Mr. Barter could see, and he was wonderfullyengaging and innocent of the world's wickeder ways as he talked thuswith the ablest of his fellow professionals. 

The fellow professionals cited cases. There was Rosenthal, a notedreceiver in his day, to whom a dishonest clerk had sold five thousandpounds for five hundred. Rosenthal had held the notes for six years, andhad then put them cautiously on the Continental market. He was an oldhand, was Rosenthal, and very clever and leary, but they had bowled himout. The clerk was wanted on another charge, and turned Queen'sevidence against the receiver. Almost all the stories had this kind oftermination, because the legal gentlemen whom young Mr. Barter consultedremembered mainly cases in which they or their friends had been engaged, or cases which had resulted in criminal proceedings. Others therecertainly were, but they were vague and necessarily without thoseguiding particulars which he desired. 

It has been already hinted that the young man was a gambler, and it islikely that most of the reasons which made the money seem so welcome tohim had their sources at the gaming table. He belonged to one of thoseclubs which deserve to be numbered among the blessings ofmodern society--where men do not meet for social intercourse andgood-fellowship, or for dining purposes, or for any of the common andamiable reasons which draw men into club-life, but simply and purelyto the end that they may win one another's money. It was a joint-stockswindling company to which young Mr. Barter belonged, and within itslimits every man proposed to himself to get the better of every otherman by such means as lay in his power. A pigeon got in amongst themevery now and then, of course--came in well-feathered and went outplucked, but for the main part the rooks pecked hungrily at one another, and made but little of their time and pains. The one solitary advantageof these corporations is that they gather the depredatory birdstogether, and lead them to prey upon themselves instead of wanderingabroad for the defeathering of the innocent and artless who aboundeven in these days. The well-constituted mind can hardly fail to takepleasure in the contemplation of these resorts, where Greek meets Greek(in the modern French sense as well as the old heroic)--where scoundrelencounters scoundrel, and learns that the pleasure of being cheated isby no means so great as that of cheating. 

There were people of widely ranging social position in this curiouscontingent. One or two men of title, and one or two of the highestsocial or commercial respectability, lent their names for someinconceivable reason to grace the front page of the neatly-bound littlevolume of rules which govern, or sometimes fail to govern, the conductof the corporation. Mr. Barter rubbed shoulders with young men--veryyoung men they were--who would one day have handles to their names, andenjoy the control of considerable estates. He sat at the same table withmen whose birth and antecedents, like those of the immortal Jeames, wereshrouded in a mystery. He met men of his own position, who like himselfwere desperately glad of being numbered in the same club society withmen eminent on the turf, or familiar in the gilded saloons of the great. He liked to think of those gilded saloons; it might be interestingto know what he thought they resembled--most probably a somewhatold-fashioned earthly paradise of ormolu. He bragged indefatigablyof his club and the people whom he met there. He dated all his privatecorrespondence from it, and spent hundreds of daylight hours above theivories and the pasteboard. 

At the time of that foolish and weak-willed Bommaney's disaster therewere two or three I. O. U. 's for sums much more considerable than hecould afford to part with in the hands of his fellow-members. Law is anecessity to human society. Even a band of brigands can't hang togetherwithout it. Debt, outside the club, was by no means a thing to beharshly spoken of, but debt to a fellow-member was a literal millstoneround a man's neck, and would sink him out of sight in no time. 

The elder Barter had gone over to the majority, despatched by thatstreet accident, and if the old man had known nothing of the young man'scourses, he had had it in his power to make him well-to-do. But he hadpaid his debts once at least, and had more than once had occasion togrieve over the boy's handling of the firm's money, and so had made hiswill entirely in his wife's favour, leaving his son dependent upon hergood graces. The mother was disposed to be a little sterner than thefather had been. Perhaps if young Barter had dreaded her less poorBommaney's fallen notes might have been returned to him. 

But, to get on with the story, the young man's chief creditor at theclub was one Steinberg, a gentleman whose time appeared to be absolutelyat his own disposal, though he was known by some of his fellow-membersto have an address in Hatton Garden, and to be more or less of a diamondmerchant there. He often carried about with him, in a pocket-book, orin neat little packages of grocer's gay paper, borne in thewaistcoat-pocket, a collection of gems of considerable value, and wouldshow them to his intimates with the _insouciance_ of a man who wasaccustomed to handling things of price. He never was without money, madelittle journeys at times, which rarely took him away from town for morethan a day or two, and was, almost always, wholly unoccupied except forthe cards. 

Now young Barter had a prodigious idea of this gentleman's astuteness. He had no particular belief in his honesty, and he believed him, notaltogether unreasonably as the sequel proved, to be initiated into mostof the mysteries of modern rascality. This was merely a general notion, based upon statements made by Steinberg himself, and supported by theopinion of his intimates. Nobody spoke ill of Steinberg; it was onlyunderstood that there was no move upon the board with which he was notfamiliar. Young Barter, meeting him one evening at the club, whilstBommaney's disappearance was still a fresh topic of town conversation, spoke to him about it, with an assurance clearly begotten of practice. 

'Now, look here, Steinberg, ' he said, in his open and engaging way. 'Suppose you'd nobbled those notes, what should you do with 'em?'

Perhaps Mr. Steinberg resented the form of this inquiry. But be that asit may, he responded with some tartness, 'Suppose you'd nobbled them?'

At this chance thrust young Barter turned curiously red and white, andhad some ado to recover that open smile of his. 

'Hang it, ' he said, 'you can't suppose I meant it that way. But, ' with ahalf-hysteric courage, 'suppose you had--suppose I had--suppose anybodyhad--what would he do? You, I, anybody?'

Mr. Steinberg sipped at his lemon squash--he drank that inspiringliquid all the year round, and nothing else until cards for the daywere over--and puffed at his cigar, and looking young Barter full in theface, nodded and smiled with an odd mingling of meaning and humour. 

'Put him on to me, ' he said, with perfect affability. 'I'll put him upto it. '

'Rather dangerous, wouldn't it be?' said Barter, showing his white teethin a somewhat forced and ghastly manner. 

'Everything's dangerous for an ass, ' said Steinberg. 

'I shouldn't have thought, ' laughed Barter, 'that that was your line. '

He spoke as jestingly as he could, but he knew that his laugh wasforced, and that the voice in which he spoke was unlike his voice ofevery day, and he wished, with the whole of his quaking heart, that hehad left the theme alone. 

'Well, no, ' said Steinberg, 'I suppose you wouldn't. ' He sipped hisliquor through a straw, and blew half a dozen rings of smoke from hislips with practised dexterity, and kept a glittering German-Jewish eyeon Barter. Perhaps he meant something by the glance, perhaps he meantnothing. He was a rather Machiavelian and sinister-looking personage, was Mr. Steinberg, and there was something even in the calm expressionof those perfectly-formed rings of smoke and in the very way in which, he sipped his liquor, and most of all in the observant glitter of hiseye, which spoke of a penetration and shrewdness very far out of thecommon. More and more young Barter wished that he had not broached thistheme with Steinberg. 

He could not help it for his soul. He could feel that his colour wascoming and going with a dreadful fluttering alternation. He quailedbefore the Israelitish eye so shrewdly cocked at him, and when in a veryspasm of despair he tried to meet it, he was so abjectly quelled by itthat he felt his face a proclamation of his secret. 

Steinberg went on sipping and smoking, and said nothing; but when theyoung scoundrel, his companion, had somewhat recovered himself and daredagain to look at him, there was the same shrewd and wary glint in hiseyes. 

Young Barter had been unhappy enough before this, but after it the moneybecame a burden hateful and horrible. He met Steinberg often, andforced himself to be noisy in his company. In his dread of seeminglow-spirited, or ill at ease, he said things about his dead father whichhe would have left unsaid, had he consulted the little good that wasleft in him; and Steinberg seemed to watch him very closely. 

Young Barter put off his creditor with promises. He would have lots ofmoney by and by. That seemed credible enough in the position of affairs, and Steinberg waited. In a while, however, he became exigent, anddeclined any longer to be satisfied with promises. One night the unhappyrascal, playing all the more because of his troubles, all the morewildly, and certainly all the worse, fell back upon his LO. U. 's. Steinberg followed him from the club. It was late, and the streets werevery quiet. 

'This won't do, you know, Barter, ' said Steinberg, tapping him on theshoulder as they walked side by side. 

'Begad it won't, ' said young Barter, doing his best to make light of it. 'They've been cutting into me pretty freely this past week or two. '

'Well, ' said Steinberg, puffing at his eternal cigar, and looking askantat Barter under the light of a street-lamp which they happened to benearing at the moment, 'what you've got to do, you know, is to find theman who knows Mr. Bommaney. '

The commotion which assailed Barter at this speech was like an inwardearthquake. 

'What--what do you mean?' he panted. 

'That's what you've got to do, ' said Steinberg tranquilly. 

'Do you mean to insinuate----' Barter began to bluster; but the older, cooler, and more accomplished scoundrel stopped him contemptuously. 

'You know where they are, ' he said 'Why don't you get at 'em?'

VI

About noon on the following day Mr. Steinberg, seated in a smallinner chamber in Hatton Garden, leisurely answering his sole businesscorrespondent of that morning, was in no way surprised when the boy heemployed to open the door and receive visitors brought in a card bearingthe name of 'Mr. John Barter, jun. '

'Show him in, ' said Mr. Steinberg; and young Mr. Barter, hearing thisin the outer room, came in with a pale-faced and excited alacrity. Thediamond merchant dismissed the boy with a word. 

'Well, ' he said, turning the tip of his cigar upwards by a protrusion ofthe under lip, 'what is it?'

'About that little matter, ' said young Barter nervously, 'we weretalking of last night. '

'The little matter we were talking of last night?' asked Steinberg idly, looking at him with half-shut eyes. 'That hundred you owe me?'

'Well, perhaps that afterwards, ' said Barter with a frightenedbreathless laugh in his voice. 'But about the other matter first. '

'The other matter?' Steinberg asked, in a lazier manner than before. 'What other matter?' He took up his pen, dipped it in the inkstandbefore him, and tracing a line or two of his correspondent'scommunication with it, turned to his own unfinished letter. 

Young Barter was already sufficiently agitated, and this curiousreception made him more embarrassed than ever. 

'About that affair of Bommaney's, ' he said, feeling as if a rapid wheelhad been somehow started in his brain. 

'Ah!' said Steinberg, writing rapidly, and speaking in a voice whichseemed to indicate that he neither understood nor cared to understand, 'that affair of Bommaney's, eh?'

This reception was nothing less than dreadful to the young criminal. Hehad reckoned on having his way made easy for him. Steinberg had actuallyoffered to become his accomplice in crime, and had lured him todisclosure. He could have wished that the floor would open and lethim through. He saw that he had already exposed his hand, and began toimagine all manner of consequences resulting from the exposure. Not oneof the consequences he foresaw promised to be of a nature agreeable tohimself, and for the moment the hatred with which Steinberg inspired himwas of so mad a nature that there was nothing he would not have done tohim if he had had the courage and the power. 

Steinberg wrote on, shaking his fist in what seemed to be an unusualalert, and even threatening, manner. There was a great deal ofunnecessary motion in Steinberg's hand, and Barter, looking at its swiftand resolute movements, got a blind sort of impression of strength outof it, and nullified the feeling with which it inspired him. The letterwritten, enveloped, addressed, and stamped, Steinberg tossed it on oneside, and leaning back in his arm-chair, turned an uninterested lookonce more upon his visitor. 

'That affair of Bommaney's, ' he said. 'What was that?'

Mr. Barter thought this inquiry altogether too barefaced, and responded, with a hectic flush of courage, 'Come, Steinberg, don't play the fool with a fellow. You know jolly wellwhat it was last night. '

Mr. Steinberg's keen and impassive face underwent no change. 

'What did I know last night?' he asked. 

'You know, ' Barter began angrily; and then the hectic flush of couragedied, and a dreadful chill of fear succeeded it. What had he known? Hehad only guessed--till now. But now, young Mr. Barter felt, to employthe expressive ideas of his set, that he had given himself away. Steinberg capped the question in his mind. What did I know last night?

'You haven't come to waste your time or mine, I suppose? You've come tosay something. Why not say it?'

His guest, sitting in a terrible confusion, and feeling himselfaltogether betrayed and lost, Steinberg marched to the door, andaddressing the boy in the outer room, bade him carry the letter to thepost and return no more that day. Then, having locked the outer door, hereturned and resumed his seat. 

'Now, what is it?' he asked. 

Barter, recognising the fact that his own purpose was already exposed, made a desperate dash. 

'About those notes old Bommaney was supposed to have run away with. Ithink--I think, mind you, that if there was any way of using them, Icould lay my hands upon them. '

'I remember, ' said Steinberg, 'you said something of the kind lastnight. I shouldn't advise you to touch 'em. It's a dangerous game. They're very worthless, and the game isn't worth the candle. '

'Worthless?' echoed Barter. 'They're worth eight thousand pounds. '

'They're worth eight thousand pounds, ' responded Steinberg, 'to the manthey belong to. They're not worth eight hundred to anybody else. '

Young Mr. Barter's whole soul seemed to rise in protest against thisabominable fallacy. When he had screwed up his courage so far as toinduce himself to accept this older and more experienced scoundrel'spartnership, he had conceived the possibility of the partner crying outfor halves. But that he should want so enormous a share of the spoil wasquite intolerable. 

'Not worth eight hundred?' He could only gasp the questioning protest. 

'If I had 'em to sell, ' Steinberg answered calmly, flicking the wastefrom his cigar by a movement of his little finger, 'I should think eighthundred an uncommon good price for 'em. Later on and sold at second handthey might fetch a thousand. Later on and sold at third hand they mightfetch fifteen hundred. One can hardly tell. Of course the value will goon mounting with distance from the original source of danger and withthe lapse of time. '

He said all this very calmly and reflectively, and young Barter, collecting his whirling wits as well as he could, tried a stroke ofdiplomacy, which, as he fondly hoped, would answer a double purpose. 

'She'll never let them go for that, or for anything like it. '

'She won't, won't she?' asked Steinberg, smiling brightly, as if thestatement amused him. 'Then she'll never let 'em go at all, my friend. How did you come to find she had 'em?'

'I made a little bit of a discovery, ' Barter answered. 

'Ah! That was it, was it, ' said the elder rascal, falling back into hisutter want of interest. 'You'll let me have that hundred. '

'I will in a day or two, ' answered Barter, _arréanti_. 

'Well, as for a day or two, ' returned Steinberg, rubbing his foreheadwith the tips of his fingers, and looking very careless and composed, 'I'm really very much afraid I can't let you have it. It's beenoutstanding a goodish time, and to tell you the truth, old man, I wantit very badly. If you'll let me have it to-night I shall be obliged toyou. I've been hit rather hard this last day or two. Shall we make thata bargain? To-night?'

'I--I'm afraid, ' Barter stammered, 'it's no use talking about to-night. '

'Well, ' said Steinberg, with a pitiless uninterested suavity, 'you knowthe rules. '

He drew a little book from his pocket, and tossed it over the table tohis guest. 

'You'll find it on page five. Rule fourteen. It's ticked in red ink, ifyou'll take the trouble to look at it. '

Barter opened the book and consulted its pages blindly for a while, andthen the mist which seemed to obstruct brain and eyesight clearing away, he read the pages indicated. It set forth the principle that all moneyslost at games of skill or chance, or upon bets made within the limitsof the club, were payable within four-and-twenty hours. It set forthfurther that debts not paid within that time might be brought under thenotice of the Committee, who were empowered to act under Rule nine. Rulenine ordained the public posting of the defaulter's name, his suspensionin default of payment, and, in case of continued obduracy or poverty, his expulsion. 

'First and last, Steinberg, ' said the wretched criminal, who began tofind the way of the transgressor unreasonably hard and thorny, 'firstand last, you've had a pretty tidy handful of money out of me. '

'Well, yes, ' said Steinberg tangibly. 'Pretty fair. '

His very admission of this fact made Barter's case seem hopeless tohimself. If he had brow-beaten, or blustered, if he had shown anger orimpatience, or had been querulous, there might have seemed to exist someslenderest chance for him. But Steinberg was so unmoved that he seemedimmovable. 

'You'd better persuade her, ' he said, with a scarcely perceptible grin. Looking at Barter, and observing that he sat with his eyes still bentupon the book of rules, and head dejected, he allowed the grin tobroaden. Barter, suddenly looking up at him, saw him smiling like agargoyle, with a look of infinitely relishing cruelty and cunning. 

'You won't find her hard to persuade, I'm sure, ' said Steinberg. 'Come, now, I'll talk business to you. I'll take ten of 'em for it, and cryquits, and I wouldn't do that for anybody but a friend. '

The frank admission of the value of his own friendship was plainlylegible in that gargoyle smile, and the unhappy Barter read it clearly. 

'I'll--I'll see what I can do with her, ' he said, with a face and voiceof pure misery. 

'Do, my boy, ' said Steinberg, rising, and swinging the key of hischambers upon his forefinger, 'see what you can do with her. I shan'tsend any notification to the Committee before nine o'clock, old chap. You can trust me for that. You go off at once, old fellow, and see whatyou can do for her. '

The fraudulent possessor of the notes felt their burthen more than everinsupportable. He rose, and went his way with remorse and rage and thebitterness of baffled stratagem in his heart. His wounded mind soared toso lofty a height of egotism in its struggles that he positively foundthe impudence to curse Bom-maney for having dropped the notes inhis office. Then he cursed himself for having taken them, and cursedSteinberg for robbing him, and so moved off in a condition quitepitiable to one who could find the understanding and the heart to pityhim. 

Steinberg stopped behind, and smoked smilingly. He was the successfulscoundrel, and found the transaction as sweet as the young Barter foundit bitter. 

'I don't think hell have much trouble with her, ' he said to himself; andhe enjoyed that little jest so much that he caught himself smiling at ita hundred times in the course of the afternoon and evening. 

VII

Old Brown, who was one of the sunniest-natured of men, went gloomy whenthe news of his old friend's dreadful fall came to his ears. It does himno more than justice to say that he mourned Bommaney senior infinitelymore than the money. He liked to trust people, and had all his life longbeen eager to find excuses for defaulters. He could find no excuse here. The theft was barefaced, insolent, dastardly. He puzzled over it, andgrew more cynical and bitter in his thoughts of the world at large thanhe could have imagined himself. But then, when Bommaney junior camehome, and insisted on the restoration of the missing eight thousand fromhis own small fortune, old Brown brightened up again. There was sucha thing as honesty in the world, after all. The restoration warmedhis heart anew. At first he fought against it, and would have noneof it--the mere candid and honest offer of it was enough for him; butPhilip was more resolute than himself, and the stronger man won. Philshould never have cause to repent his goodness, the old fellow declaredto himself a thousand times. He should reap the proper reward of his ownhonour. Brown admired and loved Phil out of bounds for this little bitof natural honesty and justice. He thought there had never been a finerfellow in the world, and his heart warmed to him as if he had been a sonof his own. As for that rascal of a father--and when he got so far inhis thoughts he fumed so with wrath that he dared go no farther, and wascompelled, for the sake of his own peace, to banish the friend of hisschooldays from his mind a thousand times a week. 

It was about a year later than the disgrace of the house of Bommaneythat old Brown, to his daughter's perplexity and grief, began to showsigns of trouble almost as marked as those he had displayed after hisold friend's defection. The old boy's newspaper no longer interested himof a morning. He began to be lax about that morning ride which he hadonce regarded as being absolutely necessary to the preservation ofhealth in London. He had been impassioned with the theatre, and hadbecome a diligent attendant at first-night performances. Even theseceased to have any joy for him, and he neglected, in fine, all his oldsources of amusement He went about sorrowful and grumpy, expressing thedolefullest opinions about everything. There was going to be war, stockswere going down, trade was crumbling, there was no virtue in man. 

Patty tried her best to coax him from these pessimistic moods, butthe old boy was not to be persuaded. On fine evenings, when there wasnothing better to be done, he had loved greatly, between the quietold-fashioned tea and the quiet old-fashioned supper, to dress for outof doors, and with Patty on his arm to wander into Regent's Park, andthere inhale the best imitation of country atmosphere that London couldafford. He dropped this amiable and affectionate habit, and took torambling out alone, coming home late, and haggard, and not infrequently, at such times, staring at his daughter with an aspect so sorrowing andwretched that she knew not what to make of him. 

The girl, watching him with a constantly increasing solicitude, could atlast endure this condition of affairs no longer. He came home one night, leaving neither his stick nor hat in the outer hall, and sat down in thedining-room, muffled and great-coated, the picture of dejection. Patty, kneeling before him, removed his hat, smoothed his hair, and began tounbutton his overcoat. 

'Papa!' she cried suddenly, 'what _is_ the matter with you? Why are youso changed?'

He breathed a great sigh, and laid his hand upon her head. Then heturned his face away from her--to hide his eyes, she fancied. 

'You are in trouble, ' she went on. 'It is not kind to keep it from me. Is it anything that I have done, or anything I could do. '

'No, no, my darling, ' he said softly, laying his hand upon her headagain. 

'Is it money, dear?'

'No, no. It isn't money. Don't talk about it, my dear. Don't talk aboutit. '

'Now, papa, you make me think it very grave indeed. '

'There, ' he said, rising, 'you shan't see any more of it, and we'll sayno more about it Well be gay and bright again, and well hope that thingswill turn out for the best. '

The attempt to be gay and bright again resulted in most mournfulfailure, and the girl grew frightened. She had nursed her fears for manydays, and had hidden them. 

'Papa!' she said, trembling ever so little, 'you must let me know whatit is. Let us bear it together, dear. Whatever it may be it can't mattervery much if it leaves us two together--and----'

'Ah! 'said old Brown, looking at her with a pitying smile. 

'Is it anything----?' She stopped short, and really found no courage tocomplete the question. 

'My darling, ' he answered, folding her in his arms, and staring sadlyover her shoulder. She felt the hands that embraced her quiver, and sheknew he had understood her half-expressed query. This frightened her somuch that it gave her boldness. 

'There is something the matter with Phil, ' she said, pushing the old manaway, and holding him at arm's length. 'Tell me what it is. '

'My dear, ' he answered, 'you shouldn't leap at conclusions in that way. 'But the disclaimer was altogether too feeble to deceive her. Philipwas the mysterious cause of her father's trouble. Her wandering, painedeyes, her parted lips, the terror and inquiry in her face, frightenedthe old man. 'No, no, ' he cried, 'you must not think it too bad. I'm notsure of anything. I don't suppose it's at all a matter of consequence. Idaresay he's an old fool. I hope I am. '

These hints and innuendoes were about the last thing in the world tosatisfy a girl who had been made anxious about her lover. 

'Tell me, ' she commanded. 'I have a right to know. What has happened?'She was no more inclined to be jealous than girls who are in lovecommonly are. She had, indeed, a native fund of confidence, and hertrust in Phil's loyalty had been of the unquestioning sort, quiteprofound and settled. Yet for a moment there rose before her mentalvision the dim picture of some possible rival, and at the mere hint ofthis she grew ashamed, and flamed into indignation against herself. 

'Tell me, ' she said; 'I insist on knowing. '

'Well, my dear, ' said the old man miserably and reluctantly, I've beentold that his father hastened his own ruin with dice and cards. ' Itwas the first time he had mentioned Bommaney senior in his daughter'shearing for a year. She looked at him with eyes still intent, butsomehow milder and less alarmed. 'Phil, ' the old boy continued, 'I'mafraid that Phil is travelling in his father's steps. '

'Phil a gambler!' she said, with an honest scorn of conviction. 'I knowbetter. What makes you think it?'

'There are a lot of beastly clubs at the West End, ' said the old man, beginning to struggle with his overcoat, partly because he wished toavoid the girl's look, and partly because the motion was a reliefto him. 'Gambling-places. Places where men meet for no other earthlypurpose than to cheat one another. I'm as fond of a rubber at whist asanybody; but no honest man would put his head into one of those holes ofinfamy if he knew its character. '

'Are you speaking of Phil, papa?' she asked. Her voice was low andtremulous, and there was almost a note of threatening in it. Thegentlest creature will fight for her own--a fact for which some of ushave reason to be grateful. 

'Yes, my dear, ' her father answered with a kind of sullen sadness; 'I'mtalking about Phil. He's a member of the vilest crowd of the wholelot, and he's there night after night. ' He dashed his overcoat into anarm-chair with despairing anger, and went marching up and down the room. 'I saw him one night by accident as he was going in. I knew the place. You might have knocked me down with a feather. I've watched him therenight after night. Don't tell me I hadn't the right to watch him. I hadthe right My little girl shan't marry a gambler. I won't have my fortunewasted by a gambler, and my child's heart broken. I took a room, ' hepursued wrathfully, 'opposite the place. I've sat there in the dark withthe window open, and caught the d---- worst cold I ever had in my lifewatching for him. I've seen him go in again and again. He's a lost man, I tell you, ' he cried in answer to his daughter's look and gesture; 'theman who has that vice in his blood is lost!'

He was storming loudly, for he was one of those in whom emotion musthave expression in noise, but a sudden loud peal at the bell cut shorthis harangue, and he and Patty stood in silence to know who it might bewho called so late. As it happened, it was no other than the lost manhimself. He was shown in according to wont and usage without previousannouncement, and entered gay and smiling, elate and tender. 

As he looked from one to the other the expression of his face changed. He moved quickly towards Patty, and took her hands in his. 

'There's something the matter, ' he said gently. 'You're in trouble!'

The old boy, glaring at him, growled, 'We are, ' and snatching up hisovercoat, threw it over his arm, and slipped his hat upon his head witha gesture which Philip took for one of defiance. As a matter of fact itexpressed no more than wrathful grief, but then gesture and expressionare hard to read unless you have the key to them. 

'We'd better have it out, Phil, ' said the old man, 'here and now. You'veturned gambler, and I've found you out. '

'No, ' Phil answered, with an odd smile; 'I haven't turned gambler, Iassure you. You've heard that I've joined the Pigeon Trap? That's whatthey call it in the City. I prefer to call it the Hawks' Roost. Thereare too few pigeons go there to be plucked to justify the other title, and I give you my word of honour, Mr. Brown, that I'm not one of them. '

The young man's air was candid and amused. There was an underlyinggravity beneath the smile, and for people who had believed in him asdevoutly as his two listeners it was hard to disbelieve him now. 

'You've gone into the infernal hole, ' said old Brown, more than halfabandoning suspicion, and yet inclined to leave it growlingly, as a dogmight surrender a bone he conceived himself to have a right to. 'What doyou want there?'

'I want to do a very important stroke of business there, sir, ' Philipanswered. The smile quite disappeared from his eyes at this moment, andhe looked very grimly resolute. 'I will tell you this much, ' he added, 'because you have a right to know it. I am in pursuit of a brace ofscoundrels there. I think I've salted the tail of one of 'em already. I believe with all my heart, sir, that I'm going to clear my father'scharacter, and I would go into worse places than the Pigeon Trap if Isaw my way to doing that. '

Patty of course was clinging to him without disguise by this time, anxious only to atone for having given an ear to any word against him, even for a moment. Phil put his arm about her waist and kissed her. Hehad never to his knowledge performed this act in the presence of a thirdperson until now, but he got through it without embarrassment. 

'You think you can clear your father's character?' asked hissweetheart's father. There was a tinge of scepticism in his voice, though he tried to hide it. 

'Yes, sir, ' said Phil, his head thrown back a little, and his eyesgleaming. Nobody had ever looked so handsome to Patty's fancy as he didat that moment 'I know already that there was no real stain upon hishonour, and I'm surprised myself for thinking that there ever could havebeen, bad as things looked. My father never took wrongful possession ofyour money. He was robbed of it, and I think I can lay my hand upon thethief. '

There was a prodigious excitement at this declaration, and the young manwas overwhelmed with questions. He could name no names, of course, and give no clue, but he sketched the story. He contented himself bydescribing young Barter as Thief Number One, and he was satisfied todescribe Steinberg as Probable Thief Number Two. He had learned, itappeared, that Thief Number One had succeeded on his father's death toa carefully limited partnership in a business affair in the city. Theguiding spirit in the concerns of Thief Number One had been his father'smanaging clerk. The income of Thief Number One was strictly limited, and his actual control over the affairs of the firm was non-existent. Notwithstanding these facts, the young man was guilty of countlessextravagances, and was a reckless gambler. Within the last twelve monthshe could hardly have paid away at the club less than a thousand pounds. He had been extremely hard up before the loss of the money, and it wasin his offices that the roll of banknotes had been lost. As for ProbableThief Number Two, he played rook to Number One's pigeon. He had avisible hold upon him; Number One trembled before him, and did whathe was bidden to do. Number Two had plenty of money, and as shady areputation as any man in London who was not among the known criminalclasses. Phil's belief was that Number Two was disposing of the notesfor Number One, and that this simple fact accounted for his power overhim. 

'And I'm going to follow their track, ' said Phil, tapping the clenchedknuckles of his right hand upon the open palm of his left with a quietvehemence, 'until I find out everything, if I follow it until I amgray. '

VIII

It would appear that a spider may be among the most daring, skilful, andpredatory of his species, that he may be gifted with the most constantwatchfulness and appetite, and yet, whether by the intrusion ofan accidental walking-stick or broom (which would assuredly seemprovidential to the fly), or by stress of weather, or the desperateactivity of a victim, may have his best laid schemes brought tonought, and his most mathematically laid web rent to tatters. In theentomological world a solitary interview between fly and spider isusually fatal to the one, and satisfactory to the other. But we of thehigher developments, who model ourselves, or are modelled, upon thelines of myriads of remote ancestors, and far-away relatives, haverefined upon their primitive proceedings, and have made their simpleactivities complex by development. 

In an absolutely primitive condition the Steinberg spider would havedrained the Barter fly at a single orgie, and would have left him towither on the lines. As things were, he came back to him with a constantgusto of appetite, tasting him on Monday, despatching him to buzz amonghis fellows until Saturday, and then tasting him again, the Barter flyseeming for a while--for quite a considerable time in fact--lusty andactive and able-bodied, and looking as though this kind of thing mightgo on for ever without much damage to him, and the spider himself givingno sign of overtaxed digestive powers. 

Not to run this striking and original simile out of breath, the Barterfly endured for a round twelve months, without showing signs of anaemiaso pronounced as to look dangerous to his constitution. At the end ofthat time, however, all the surplus blood had been drawn from his body, and the spider had grown so keen by the habit of constant recurrence tohim that any prolonged connection between them began to look desperate. In plain English, the eight thousand pounds which had once so lightlypassed from the hands of Mr. Brown to the hands of Mr. Bommaney had nowpassed, with just as little profit to the man who parted with them, fromthe hands of young Barter to the hands of Steinberg. 

It was just about the time when this lingering but inevitabletransaction was completed that chance led young Barter to his encounterwith the son of the man whose belongings he had appropriated. Everybodyknows how apt newly-made acquaintances sometimes are to renew themselvesagain and again. You meet a man whom you have never seen before, seehim just long enough to take a passing interest in him, and to knowgenerally who and what he is, and you run against him on the morrow, andagain on the morrow, and so on, until in a week he has grown as familiarto your thoughts as any other mere acquaintance of whose identity youmay have been aware for years. This happened in the case of PhilipBommaney and younger Mr. Barter. They entered the Inn together, or leftit together, or Philip ran upstairs or downstairs as Barter was in thevery act of leaving or entering his chambers. Putting together a certainfamily resemblance which he thought he noticed, the identity of a ratheruncommon name, and the curious frequency of these chance encounters, Barter found it hard to avoid the belief that his new-made acquaintancehad a rather careful eye upon him. His nerve was a good deal shaken, andhe was by no means the man he had been. To the unobservant stranger thefrank gaiety of his laugh was as spontaneous as ever, but then that hadnever had much to do with Barter's inward sensations. Perhaps he got thelaugh in some remote fashion from an ancestor who really ought to havehad it, and who may have been as dull and as little laughter-loving tolook at as his successor was within. Philip rather took to the fellowat first sight, and was slow to suspect him, even when James Hornetthad told his story. But the young Barter was not satisfied, as heshould have been, with playing the part of one insect at a time. Itwas unwholesome enough, one might have thought, for him to play fly toSteinberg's spider, and yet he must needs take to playing moth to PhilipBommaney's candle, a light of danger to him, as he recognised almostfrom the first He was always polite to Phil, and always stopped him fora moment's conversation at their chance encounters. Phil, having beeninspired at least with a suspicion that this engaging young man wasresponsible for the actual disgrace which had fallen upon Bommaneysenior, always bent a grave scrutiny upon him. Barter sometimes wonderedwhether his new-found acquaintance's way of looking at him were habitualor particular, but he could never solve that problem. To Barter's nervesthe glance of dispassionate analysis always seemed to ask--Did you stealthose notes? and whether his mind and nerves were at accord or no madebut little difference to him. His mind rejected the idea of suspicion, but his nerves accepted it with trembling. He knew perfectly well thathe could not endure the certainty of Phil Bommaney's knowledge, butnone the less he found the uncertainty tantalising and painful. This isperhaps one of the hardest things an undetected criminal has to endure, that he lives in a world of suspicion of his own making, where everyimagination is real and as dreadful as the fact. In his own mind youngBarter credited himself with courage when he made overtures for Philip'scompanionship. In reality he made the overtures because he was a coward, and a braver scoundrel would have disdained them. 

Philip felt himself impelled to watch this young man, and was notaltogether displeased that he found the opportunity thrust upon him. Almost facing the gateway of the old Inn there is an old-fashionedrestaurant, deserted from its hour of opening until noon, and from thencrowded inconveniently till two o'clock, deserted again till five, andonce more inconveniently crowded till seven. Philip, having the power tochoose his own time for meals, and frequenting this old house, sometimesmet Barter in the act of coming away from it with the dregs of thestream of the late lunchers or diners. He fell into the habit of goinga little earlier, and Barter would signal him to the table at which hesat, if by rare chance there happened to be a vacant seat at it. Theyoung rascal's tendency lay towards monologue, and since it was his cueto be open-hearted, and very unsuspicious of being suspected, hetalked with much freedom of himself, his pursuits, and his affairs. Thequestion which Barter's nerves were always finding in Philip's eyes was, as a matter of fact, not often absent from his mind. 'Now, how did yousteal those notes?' was the one active query of his intelligence as helistened to Barter's candid prattle. 

It was in the course of these confidences that Philip learned of theexistence of that Pigeon Trap of which Mr. Barter was so proud to be aninhabitant. It was at Barter's solicitation that he visited the place, and it was Barter who proposed him as a member. 

Being a member it was not long before he discovered the fact ofSteinberg's influence over the young solicitor. He noticed a terrifieddeference in Barter's manner towards the other, a frightened alacrity ofobedience to his suggestions. He noticed also that Steinberg and Barterplayed a good deal by themselves, and that Barter always lost. 

The men of Hawks' Boost talked pretty freely about each other in theabsence of such of their fellow clubmen as were under discussion. Barterwas spoken of as Steinberg's Mug, Berg's Juggins, Stein's Spoofmarker. It was generally admitted that Stein made a good thing out of him, andthe wonder was where Barter got his money. There was a pretty generalapprehension that the young man, at no very far future date, would cometo grief. The contemplation of this probability affected the Boostersbut little in an emotional way, but it made them keen to see thatMr. Barter paid up punctually, and though they were very shy of paperacceptances from their comrades as a general thing, they were shyer ofhis than of most men's. 

These things Philip Bommaney junior attentively noted. At first theclubmen rather wondered at him. He was in their precincts often, and would smoke his pipe and watch whatever game might be going withtranquil interest, but he never played, and could not be induced to bet. _Que diable faisant-il dans cette gaière?_ the clubmen wanted to know. He never told them, and in a while they grew accustomed to him andhis ways. He continued his quiet watch upon Mr. Barter, and includedSteinberg in his field of observation. One evening, dining at the oldrestaurant, he marked Barter, melancholy and alone. He was sitting in anattitude of apparent dejection, tapping upon the table with a fork, anddeep sunk in what seemed to be an uncomfortable contemplation. But whenthe moth saw his candle he brightened, and fluttered over to it. 

'You might come over, ' said Barter, when they had sat together until thelatest of the dining guests had gone away. 'You might come over to mychambers and smoke a cigar if you've nothing else to do. I don't careabout going down to the club tonight. '

The Steinberg spider was supposed to be waiting there, coldly patientand insatiable, and Barter dreaded him. Philip had never entered therooms, but they had an attraction for him. He accepted his companion'sinvitation, and they entered the chambers together. A fire lingeredin the grate, and Barter replenished it, and, having produced a box ofcigars and a bottle of cognac, proffered refreshment to his guest. Thehonest man began somewhat to recoil from himself and from his companion. What was he there for? The answer was pretty evident. There was nothingbetween this loud-babbling youth and himself which could have drawn theminto even a momentary comradeship, if it had not been for the suspicionhis father's story had inspired in him. Frankly, he was there because hesuspected the man, because he desired to watch him, because, if he foundthe chance, he was willing to set him in the dock. To smoke his tobaccoand drink his liquor in those circumstances had undoubtedly an air oftreachery. In a while he hardened himself, and closed his ears to allcasuist pleadings, whether for or against the course he had adopted. Hewould clear his father if he could, and if there were any mere hope ofdoing it, he would watch this fellow as a cat watches a mouse, and wouldgo on doing it until both of them were gray. 

'By the way, ' said Barter innocently, 'do you never take a hand at----'

His supple fingers supplied the hiatus, dealing out an imaginary pack ofcards with the flourishing dexterity native to them. 

'That's what I'm here for, is it?' thought Philip in his own mind. 'Weshall see. ' He said aloud, 'Sometimes, ' in an indifferent tone. 

'There's nothing worth seeing anywhere to-night, ' said young Barter. 'Suppose we try a hand. What do you say to a game at Napoleon?'

Philip consented, and his host produced two packs of cards from thebusiness safe. 

They fixed upon the points and they began to play. The points were notthose for which Mr. Barter really cared to play; for he was one of thosepeople who find no joy in cards unless they risk more than they canafford to lose. But little fish are sweet, and he thought he hadsecured a greenhorn. As it happened, the greenhorn, though he wasbut eight-and-twenty, had travelled the world all over, and hadfound himself compelled to survey mankind from China to Peru. Hewas, moreover, one of those men who like to know things, and thosequietly-observant eyes of his had taken note of the proceedings of ahundred scoundrels in whose hands the redoubtable Steinberg himselfwould have had but poor chances. The Greek had been Philip's standingjoy, the dish best spiced to suit his intellectual palate. He haddelighted over him aboard ship, on the monstrous dreary railway journeybetween Atlantic and Pacific, in the little towns which form the centreof scores of Texan ranches, in hells at the Cape and in California, inthe free ports of China, and on the borders of the Bosphorus. In pointof fact he was by experience as little fitted to be played upon by agentleman of young Mr. Barter's limited accomplishments as almost anyman alive. 

Phil's interest in the game had grown grimly observant in the first tenminutes. Young Mr. Barter had a knack, when he shuffled the cards, of slily inclining the painted sides upwards. He had another knack ofleaving an honour at the bottom. He made a false cut with fair dexterityfor an amateur. He could, when occasion seemed to make it profitable, discard with a fair air of unconsciousness. An ace dropped out of sighta hand or two earlier, was followed by a valueless card dropped openly. The ace was taken to supply its place with a perfect smiling effrontery. But Mr. Barter's favourite trick came out when he had a weak hand. Thenhe smiled across at his opponent, breathed softly the words 'six cards, 'and dropped the worthless hand on the top of the pack, calling for a newdeal All this Philip Bommaney watched with a complete seeming innocenceand good temper. He lost his sixpences handsomely, made no protest, andlooked unruffled. 

'You play false for sixpences, do you?' he said inwardly. 'I suppose ascoundrel is a scoundrel all through, and that if you'll sell your soulfor so little, you could hardly object to driving a bargain for a largersum. '

He was often tempted in the course of a quarter of an hour to try Mr. Barter with a sudden challenge, and see what would come of it. Surveyinghis companion with that placid inquiry which Barter felt to be soexcessively uncomfortable, he came to have but a poor opinion of hiscourage. He was one of those men who, even without knowing it, takeprofound observations of their fellow-creatures. The true observer ofhuman nature is by no means a personage who is always on the strainafter insight into character. He is, on the contrary, pretty generallyan inward-looking man, who seems to notice little, and takes in hissurroundings as the immortal Joey Ladle did his wine. Philip judgedBarter to be a nervous man, and supposed him, even when strung tohis bent, to have no great tenacity or continuance of courage. He hadlearned more and more to believe his father's story, though he hadperhaps too carefully guarded himself from his own eager desire toaccept it Barter's every action with the cards offered confirmationof the belief that he had taken possession of the lost notes. Hewas certainly a petty rascal, and there was obviously nothing butopportunity needed to make him bloom into a rascal on a larger scale. Sothe temptation to drop the cards upon the table, to look his companionin the face, and to ask simply, 'How about that eight thousand pounds?'grew more and more upon him, and had to be more and more strenuouslyresisted. It seemed worth while to resist it To begin with, if youngBarter should be innocent, the querist could evidently expect nothingelse than to be taken for a madman. To continue, if his name and thelikeness to his father had already set the thief upon his guard, andhad prepared him for accusation, the question would only reveal his ownsuspicion, and thereby weaken the chances of discovery. 

Philip combated his inward desire, but could not quell it. There seemeda kind of intuition in it, a lurking certainty lay hidden behind all thedoubts he saw, and pushed him forward. 

By and by young Mr. Barter tripped on the false cut, which he hadhitherto executed with a fair amateur dexterity. 

'Excuse me, ' said Phil, as he gathered the spilt cards together. 'Youshould make the three separate motions look like one. Do the trick so. '

He performed the trick slowly, looking Barter in the face, and then wentthrough it swiftly. 

'That is how the thing ought to be done, Mr. Barter, ' he said, with aplacidity which his companion found singularly disquieting. 

And now, that same unhappy want of self-command which had givenSteinberg so clear an insight into his young friend's mind, fell oncemore upon Barter. He tried to look wondering, he tried to laugh. Theresult of that frightened contortion of the features was nothing lessthan ghastly. Unhappily for himself he knew it, and so he grew ghastlieryet, and for the life of him could not tell where to set his eyes. 

'So you're a sharper in a small way, are you, Mr. Barter?' Philipinquired suavely. 

'How dare you talk to me like that?' the detected rascal stammered. 'Youcome into a gentleman's rooms, and lose an odd half-crown or two----'

When he had got as far as this he ventured to look his companion in theface, and seeing there a very marked and readable prophecy of unpleasantthings, he backed, and in the act of doing so, tripped, and fell into achair. The intention in Phil's mind became simply unconquerable. He castrapidly about him for an instant, saw all the consequences of failurewhich might follow if he denounced the trembling wretch at once, and sethim on his guard. And yet he could not help doing what he did, and couldnot restrain the words which rose to his lips. He took Barter by thecollar, and lifted him to his feet with an unsuspected strength, and putthe question to him quietly. 

'How many of those stolen notes has Steinberg changed for you?'

It was a bold thing to do, it was perhaps a foolish thing to do, and yetit was the game. Barter stared at him speechlessly. His lips moved, buthe said nothing. Then his jaw fell as a dead man's jaw falls, and beingreleased at that instant, he dropped into the chair like a sack. 

'Now the best thing for you to do, ' said Phil, sternly regarding him, 'will be to make a clean breast of it. I have been tracking you sincethe second day of our acquaintance. '

Barter groaned, with a tremulous and hollow sound, but made no otheranswer. 

'How many of those notes are in Steinberg's hands?' Phil asked. 

The rascal's wits had begun to work again, if only a little, and hecould by this time have answered if he would. But he knew that hisown cowardice, if nothing else, had given away the game. After such aconfession as his own terror had made, what was the use of blusteror pretence? He could not guess how much was known. He was completelycornered, and must fight or yield. His native instinct at any moment wasready to teach him how much discretion was the better part of valour, and now to fight seemed mere madness. In the very terror of the nightwhich thus suddenly enveloped him he saw one gleam of hope. There wasone stroke to be made which might save him, in part at least, from theconsequences of his own misdeed. 

Philip gave these reflections but little time to grow distinct toBarter's mind. 

'How many of those notes?' he asked slowly, emphasising almost everyword by a tap of his knuckles upon the table, 'have passed intoSteinberg's hands?'

'All, ' gasped Barter; 'every one of them!'

'That will do for the present, ' said Philip, and at that instant therecame a loud summons at the door, whereat the miserable Barter started, and clasped his hands in renewed terror. He fancied an officer ofjustice there, his arrival accurately timed. 

Philip, throwing a glance about the room, and assuring himself thatthere was no means of unobserved exit, answered the summons in person. He had until that moment kept perfect possession of himself exceptfor his obedience to that overmastering intuition, but beholding Mr. Steinberg at the doorway he felt a great leap at his heart, and a suddendryness in his throat. He examined these phenomena afterwards, anddecided in his own mind that they were assignable to fear. He came tothe belief which he cherishes until now, that he had to screw up hiscourage pretty tightly before he could face the idea of confronting thepartners in rascality together. But here it may be observed in passingthat this kind of self-depreciation is a favourite trick with men ofunusual nerve, and is rarely resorted to by any but the most courageous. 

Steinberg recognised him by the light of the gas-lamp. 

'Good-evening, ' he said, nodding. 'Barter's here, I suppose. '

'Sir, ' said Phil, with recovered coolness, a certain light of humourdawning in his mind, 'Mr. Barter is within, and I have no doubt will bevery happy to see you. '

Steinberg cast a sidelong glance at him, and entered. Phil closedthe door, and followed close upon his heels. Barter, with his palecomplexion fallen to the tint of dead ashes, sat huddled in thearm-chair, staring white-eyed like a frightened madman. Steinberg staredback at him in sheer amazement at his looks, and Phil, closing the door, turned the key in the lock and pocketed it. 

'Hillo!' cried Steinberg, turning swiftly round at the click, 'what'sthis mean?' He measured Philip with his eye--a very evil and wicked eyeit was--and dropped back a step or two. 

'What's this mean?' Steinberg asked again, his quick glance darting fromone to the other. 

'It means, sir, ' said Phil, with a glad tranquillity, 'that yourfellow-scoundrel, the courageous gentleman in the arm-chair there, is inthe act of making his confession. '

Steinberg sent one savage glance at Barter, and then dashed at him, andplanting both hands within the collar of his shirt, so banged him to andfro that he would inevitably have done him a mischief of a serioussort but for Phil's intervention. The method of intervention wasless tranquil than Philip's motion up to this time had been. He toreSteinberg from his grip of the betrayer with a force he had no time tomeasure, and hurled him across the room. He staggered at the door, and his head coming noisily in contact with it, he slipped down into asitting posture with an expression suddenly changed from ferocity to acomplete vacuity and indifference. 

Now Mr. Barter, scared as he had been, and shaken to his centre, hadbegun to think again, and when he saw that Steinberg's chance in theenemy's hands was less than nothing, that fact formed as it were thelast necessary plank for the raft of safety he desired to construct. Hegot up from his place, animated by this great idea, and staggering tothe helpless Steinberg, fell down beside him and gripped his hands. 

'Tie him, Mr. Bommaney, tie him!' gurgled Barter. 'He's been the ruinof me, curse him. I should have been an honest man if it hadn't been forhim. It's him that led me into it, and he's had every sixpence of themoney. I've been his tool, his miserable tool. Tie him, Mr. Bommaney, before he comes round again. I'll hold him for you. '

One may get good advice from the most unexpected quarter, andwhencesoever good advice may come it is worth while to follow it. Philtook a dandy scarf from Steinberg's own neck, and tied him tightly, wrist to wrist Then he helped him to his feet, and set him in a chair. 

'He came here to-night, ' Barter gurgled on, with tears of sincerestpenitence, 'to bleed me again. He's got my I. O. U. For £82 he cheated meof last week. He's had every penny of the money. I haven't had so muchas a single farthing of it myself. I'll swear I haven't. '

'That's your lay, is it?' said Steinberg, whose scattered wits werecoming back to him. 'You shall answer for this violence in the properquarter, Bommaney. '

'I will answer for it in the proper quarter, ' Phil replied. 'I willtrouble you, Mr. Steinberg, to come to the proper quarter now. '

'You won't forget, ' said Barter, 'that I helped to capture him. You'llspeak a word for me, Mr. Bommaney?

'I've been that villain's victim all along. I should never have gonewrong if it hadn't been for him, and I've wanted to send the money backover and over again, but he got it into his own hands and wouldn'tlisten to it, and after all I never took the money, Mr. Bommaney--I onlyfound it. It was Steinberg kept it. He said I should be a fool to let itgo. '

What sentiments of contempt and rage inspired Mr. Steinberg's bosomat this juncture must be imagined. He looked them all, but verballyexpressed none of them. 

'Get up, ' said Phil, addressing him. Steinberg obeyed. 'Take a seat inthat corner. ' Steinberg obeyed again. 'Now you--' to Barter, 'take aplace in that corner, behind the desk. '

'With pleasure, Mr. Bommaney, ' said Barter, 'with the very greatestwillingness. I desire to make no resistance to the law. I helped tocapture the criminal Please remember that, Mr. Bommaney. Pray rememberthat. '

He took hold of a heavy ruler which happened to be lying on the desk, and deeming that he and the other rascal were about to be left alonetogether, he showed it shakily to Steinberg, as a hint that he was notwithout means of protection against a man unarmed and bound. 

Phil unlocked the door, inserted the key on the other side, disappeared, and turned the lock anew. The two criminals heard his footstep soundingelate, triumphant, and threatening to their ears as he went along theboarded floor. They listened as the footstep crossed the square bouldersof the courtyard, and listened still until their sound melted into theblended noises of the outer street. A minute later the step was heardreturning, accompanied by another, solid and terrible. They knew it, andtheir hearts, low as they were already, sank at it. The door opened andPhil reappeared, followed by a policeman. 

'I give these two in charge, ' the young man said, 'the one as the thief, the other as the receiver of a bundle of bank-notes of the value ofeight thousand pounds, the property of my father, Mr. Philip Bommaney ofCoalporter's Alley. '

'I'm quite willing to go without resistance, ' said Mr. Barter frombehind the table. 'I assisted in the capture, and I am ready to sayanything. '

'That's the first true word you've spoken, ' Steinberg snarled. 'You cantake this thing off, ' holding out his hands. 'I'll go quietly. I can getbail in an hour. '

'Don't have it taken off, Mr. Bommaney, not if we're to travel in thesame vehicle. He threatened me while you were away. He said if theygave him fifty years he'd kill me when he came out again. He'll do it, because I made a clean breast of it, didn't I, Mr. Bommaney? I made aclean breast of it, officer. I'm ready to--tell everything. He's ruinedme, and now he says he'll kill me because I'm ready to make a cleanbreast of it. '

'I choose to be taken separately, if you please. I myself will pay thefare. I won't travel with that cackling idiot. '

'I will go with Mr. Bommaney with pleasure, ' said the penitent. 'I'll gowith you with pleasure anywhere. I'd rather go with you a great deal. '

It was hardly to be expected that Philip should feel very warmly towardseither of his two companions, but of the two he misliked Steinberg theless. And, since it seemed humane and reasonable to choose, he choseSteinberg as his travelling companion. The officer set Steinberg's hatupon his head, and the quartet set out. The sight of a man with hishands tightly bound with a scarlet muffler gathered a momentary littlecrowd at the Inn gate; but, a pair of hansoms being summoned, captivesand captors were speedily relieved from vulgar observation. The stationreached, it turned out that the communicative Mr. Barter, in theexuberance of his heart, had exposed to the officer _en route_ thewhereabouts of the lost notes. He declared that to his knowledge theyrested in a safe, the position of which he indicated, in Steinberg'sHatton Garden office. The Inspector before whom the charge was madedeemed this intelligence worthy of being acted on at once. The twoprisoners were searched, and Mr. Barter was so good as to point out, among Steinberg's keys, those which were necessary for the purposes ofinvestigation. He even went so far as to offer his assistance as guide;but this was declined with a chilliness singularly at variance with thesolicitous warmth of the proposal. 

'I think, sir, ' said the Inspector, with an arctic disrespect which wasso frozen as to be almost respectful, 'that we can manage this withoutyour assistance. '

The Divisional Superintendent, being communicated with by telephone, arrived upon the scene. The matter in hand having been laid before himwith curt official brevity, he asked for the keys, called to himself aconstable, and was preparing to set out, when Philip begged permissionto accompany him. 

'The notes, sir, ' he said, 'were left in my father's trust by a dearold friend of his. My father himself was supposed to have made use ofthem--a thing of which he was incapable. If I can take to him the newsthat they are found, I can lift a load of undeserved disgrace from themind of an honourable man. '

'I shall be pleased to have your company, Mr. Bommaney, ' theSuperintendent answered, touched a little by the young man'searnestness. So the three got into a four-wheeler, and bowled away toHatton Garden, and there made entry into the chambers lately occupied byMr. Steinberg. There was no gas here, but the constable's dark lanternshowed the way. It revealed the safe in the position the communicativecriminal had assigned to it. It revealed the notes, snugly spread out inone crisp little heap, and arranged with business-like precision in theorder of their numbers. 

This golden spectacle once seen, Phil dashed into the street, hailed ahansom, and drove pell-mell, exciting the cabman who conducted him bythe promise of a double fare, to the residence of old Brown and oldBrown's daughter. There he told the glorious news, a little broken andhalting in his speech. Patty threw her arms about him, and cried withoutconcealment or restraint. Old Brown blew his nose with a suspiciousfrequency, and shook his adopted son-in-law by the hand at frequentintervals. 

'Phil, ' he cried at last, 'where's your father? By God, sir, he neverhad any need to run away from me, because he happened to lose a handfulof paltry money. What had he got to do but come and say, "Brown, it'sgone!" He hadn't trust enough in me to think I'd believe him. Let's getat him. Where is he?'

The old boy tugged furiously at the bell-pull. 

'Send Brenner round to the stable, ' he said to the servant. 'Tell himto get the horses to, and bring the carriage round at once. Where's yourfather, Phil?'

'He's down Poplar way, ' said Phil. 'Hornett, his old clerk, is living inthe same house with him. '

'We'll go down, and rouse him up, ' the old boy said, with a moist eyeand trembling hand. 'Phil, my lad, ' he went on, grasping the youngfellow's hand in his own, 'I'm getting to be an old 'un. You wouldn'tthink it to look at me, because, thank God, I've always known how totake my trouble lightly, but I've seen a lot of it in my time, and youcan take my word for this--there isn't any trouble in the world that'shardly so bitter as for an honest man to have to take another for arogue. '

So it came to pass that Bommaney senior, who after all, perhaps, hardlydeserved to be made a hero of, was plenteously bedewed with the tears ofthree most honourable and high-minded people, and was, set up in theirminds as a sort of live statue of undeserved martyrdom. They who learnedthe tale afterwards mourned his weakness, and supposed him to be thevictim of a too sensitive organisation. He lives now with a genuine haloof sanctity about him, and seems in the minds of some to have sufferedfor the sake of a great principle, quite noble, but not quite definitelydefined. 

Odd things happen every day in the world, and pass by unregarded. Theworship of Bommaney senior's sensibilities seems a trifle dull when allthings are considered, though one has to be glad that an honest son canthink of him with pity mixed with admiration. But perhaps the oddestthing of all in connection with this story may be looked for in theshorthand reporter's notes of the Recorder's speech at the Old Bailey, when the accusation against Messrs. Barter and Steinberg came to beheard. 

'You, Barter, ' said the learned Recorder, 'appear to have been drawninto this by the influence of an intelligence stronger and abler thanyour own. You appear, in a moment of weakness, to have been led awayby that stronger intelligence from the paths of rectitude. But you havedisplayed so clear a sense of the enormity of your conduct, and have, by your complete disclosures of the crime committed by you and yourcompanion, and, by your evidence in Court to-day, shown so complete arepentance for it, that I do not think that it would be politic or justto lay a severe term of imprisonment upon you. Nevertheless, the law ofthe land must be justified, and I feel a pleasure in believing that injustifying the law I am affording you an opportunity for reflection, forthe formation of good resolutions for the future, and for a confirmationof those better desires which I believe--in spite of your associationwith this criminal enterprise--to animate your mind. '

Now, to my fancy, this has a distinct element of comedy in it; but thelearned Recorder resembled some of his unlearned brethren, in respect tothe fact that he could not be expected to know everything. 

Mr. Barter thrives again, but he is even now awaiting, with theuneasiest sensations, the liberation of the man who betrayed him intocrime.