L I B R.ARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UN IVLRSITY 
 
 Of ILLINOIS 
 
 823,, 
 
 v.l
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2009 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/schwartz01murr
 
 SCHWARTZ
 
 S C H AY A E T Z 
 
 BY 
 
 D. CHRISTIE MURRAY 
 
 AUTHOR OF ; AU>"T RACHEL.' ' THE WEAKER VESSEL.' ETC. 
 
 IN TVVO VOLUMES 
 VOL. I 
 
 Hontjon 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 1889 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 /M<?64s 
 ^1 
 
 1 
 
 LO 
 
 LO 
 CD 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Schwartz : a History .... 1 
 
 II. Young Mr. Barter's Repen^^ce . . 69 
 
 x 
 
 >* 
 
 i 
 
 <^ 
 
 ^
 
 SCHWARTZ: A HISTORY 
 
 VOL. I
 
 SCHWARTZ: A HISTORY 
 
 I WAS expatriated by a man with an axe. The 
 man and the axe were alike visionary and unreal, 
 though it needed a very considerable effort of the 
 will to hold them at mental arm's length. I had 
 work on hand which imperatively demanded to 
 be finished, and I was so broken down by a long 
 course of labour that it was a matter of actual 
 difficulty with me when I sat down at my desk 
 of a morning to lay hold of the thread of last 
 night's work, and to recall the personages who 
 had moved through my manuscript pages for the 
 past three or four months. The day's work 
 always began with a fog, which at first looked
 
 4 SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY I 
 
 impenetrable, but would brighten little by little 
 until I could see my ideal friends moving in it, 
 and could recognise their familiar lineaments. 
 Then the fog would disperse altogether, and a 
 certain indescribable, exultant, feverish brightness 
 would succeed it, and in this feverish brightness 
 my ideal friends would move and talk as it were 
 of their own volition. 
 
 But one morning — it was in November, and 
 the sand -tinged foam flecks caught from the 
 stormy bay were thick on the roadway before my 
 window — the fog was thicker and more obdurate 
 than common. I read and re-read the work of 
 the day before, and the written words conveyed 
 no meaning. In a dim sort of way this seemed 
 lamentable, and I remember standing at the win- 
 dow, and looking out to where the white crests 
 of the waves came racing shorewards under a 
 leaden-coloured sky, and saying to myself over 
 and over again, ' Oh, that way madness lies ! ' 
 but without any active sentiment of dismay or
 
 I SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY 5 
 
 fear, and with a clouded, uninterested wonder as 
 to where the words came from. Quite suddenly 
 I became aware of a second presence in the 
 chamber, and turned with an actual assurance 
 that some one stood behind me. I was alone, as 
 a single glance about the room informed me, but 
 the sense of that second presence was so clearly 
 denned and positive that the mere evidence of 
 sight seemed doubtful. 
 
 The day's work began in the manner which 
 had of late grown customary, and in a while the 
 fog gave way to a brilliance unusually flushed 
 and hectic. The uninvited, invisible personage 
 kept his place, until, even with the constant fancy 
 that he was there looking over my shoulder, and 
 so close that there was always a risk of contact, 
 I grew to disregard him. All day long he 
 watched the pen travelling over the paper, all 
 day long I was aware of him, featureless, shadowy, 
 expressionless, with a vague cheek near my own. 
 During the brief interval I gave myself for
 
 6 SCHWARTZ: A HISTORY I 
 
 luncheon he stood behind my chair, and, being 
 much refreshed and brightened by my morning's 
 work, I mocked him quite gaily. 
 
 'Your name is Nerves,' I told him within 
 myself, ' and you live in the land of Mental 
 Overwork. I have still a fortnight's stretch 
 across the country you inhabit, and if you so 
 please you may accompany me all the way. 
 You may even follow me into the land of Eepose 
 which lies beyond your own territory, but its air 
 will not agree with you. You will dwindle, 
 peak, and pine in that exquisite atmosphere, and 
 in a very little while I shall have seen the last 
 of you.' 
 
 After luncheon I took a constitutional on the 
 pier, not without a hope that my featureless 
 friend might be blown away by the gusty wind, 
 which came bellowing up from the Firth of 
 Forth, with enough stinging salt and vivifying 
 freshness in it, one might have fancied, to shrivel 
 up a host of phantoms. I tramped him up and
 
 I SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY 7 
 
 down the gleaming planks in the keen salt wind 
 for half an hour, and he shadowed me unshrink- 
 ingly. With the worst will in the world I took 
 him home, and all afternoon and all evening he 
 stuck his shadowy head over my shoulder, and 
 watched the pen as it spread its cobweb lines 
 over the white desert of the paper. He waited 
 behind my chair at dinner, and late at night, 
 when the long day's work at last was over, he 
 hung his intrusive head over my shoulder and 
 stared into the moderate glass of much-watered 
 whisky which kept a final pipe in company. 
 
 He had grown already into an unutterable 
 bore, and when he insisted upon passing the 
 night with me I could — but for the obvious in- 
 utility of the thing — have lost my temper fairly. 
 He took his place at the bed-head, and kept it 
 till I fell asleep. He was there when I awoke 
 in the night, and probably because the darkness, 
 the quiet, and the sense of solitude were favour- 
 able to him he began to grow clearer. Quite
 
 8 SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY I 
 
 suddenly, and with a momentary but genuine 
 thrill of fear, I made a discovery about him. He 
 carried an axe. This weapon was edged like a 
 razor, but was unusually solid and weighty at the 
 back. From the moment at which I first became 
 aware of it to that happy hour when my phan- 
 tom bore departed and took his weapon with him, 
 there was never a conscious second in which the 
 axe was not in act to fall, and yet it never fell. 
 It was always going to strike and never struck. 
 
 ' You cannot be supposed to know it, my 
 phantom nuisance,' I said, being ready to seek 
 any means by which I might discredit the dread- 
 ful rapidity with which he seemed to be growing 
 real; 'you cannot be supposed to know it, but 
 one of these days you will furnish excellent copy. 
 As a literary man's companion you are not quite 
 without your uses. One of these days I will 
 haunt a rascal with you, and he shall sweat and 
 shiver at you, as I decline to sweat and shiver. 
 You observe I take you gaily. I am very much
 
 I SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY 9 
 
 inclined to think that if I took you any other 
 way that axe might fall, and sever something 
 which might be difficult to mend. So long as 
 
 you choose to staY. I mean to make a studv of 
 
 •/ <. - <, 
 
 you/ 
 
 Most happily I was able to adhere to that 
 resolve, but I solemnly declare it made him no 
 less dreadful. Sometimes I tried to ignore him, 
 but that was a sheer impossibility. Very often 
 I flouted him and jeered at him, mocked him 
 with his own unreality, and dared him to carry 
 out his constant threat and strike. But all day 
 and every day, and in all the many sleepless 
 watches of my nights, he kept me company, and 
 every hour the threatened blow of the razor- 
 edged axe seemed likelier to fall. But at last 
 — thank Heaven — the work was done, I touched 
 the two or three hundred pounds which paid for 
 it, and I was free to take a holiday. 
 
 We had grown too accustomed to each other 
 to part on a sudden, even then. I never saw
 
 10 SCHWARTZ: A HISTORY I 
 
 him, for he was always behind me (and even 
 when I stood before a mirror he was invisible but 
 there), but he was no longer featureless. His 
 eyes shone through a black vizard with one un- 
 winking, glittering, ceaseless threat. He wore a 
 slashed doublet with long hose reaching to the 
 upper thigh, and he had a rosette on each instep. 
 I can see quite clearly now the peculiar dull cold 
 gleam the razor-edged axe wore as he stood in 
 some shadowed place behind me, and the brighter 
 gleam it had in daylight in the streets. 
 
 When I had borne with him until I felt that 
 I could bear with him no longer, I took him, 
 being back in town again, to a London physician 
 of some eminence. The doctor took him some- 
 what gravely, insisted upon absolute mental rest, 
 prescribed a tonic, laid down certain rules about 
 diet, certain restrictions upon wine and tobacco, 
 and ordered immediate change of scene. 
 
 To begin with I went to Antwerp, thence to 
 Brussels, and thence, by the merest chance in the
 
 I SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY 1 1 
 
 world, to Janenne, a little village in the Belgian 
 Ardennes, at no great distance from the French 
 frontier. I had no idea of staying there, and on 
 the surface of things there was no reason why I 
 should have prolonged my stay beyond a day or 
 two. People visit Janenne in the summer time, 
 and suppose themselves to have exhausted its 
 limited attractions in four -and -twenty hours. 
 There is nothing at first sight to keep the stranger 
 longer, but if he will only stay for a week he will 
 inevitably want to stay for a fortnight, and if 
 once he has stayed for a fortnight, his business 
 is done, and he is in love with Janenne for the 
 rest of his natural life. Eural quiet has made 
 her home in Janenne, and contentment dwells 
 with her, sleepy-eyed. 
 
 Even in the first week of December, the russet 
 and amber -coloured leaves still cling to the 
 branches of the huge old lime-trees of Lorette, 
 and my lonely feet on the thick carpet of dead 
 leaves below made the sole sound I heard there
 
 12 SCHWARTZ: A HISTORY I 
 
 except the ceaseless musical tinkle of chisel and 
 stone from the distant granite quarries — a suc- 
 cession of notes altogether rural in suggestion — 
 like the tinkle of many sheep -bells. Even in 
 that first week of December I could sit in the 
 open air there, where the mild winter sunlight 
 flashed the huge crucifix and the colossal Christ 
 of painted wood, which poise above the toy chapel 
 carved out of the live rock. The chapel and the 
 crucifix are at one end of a lime-tree avenue a 
 third of a mile long, and the trees are aged be- 
 yond strict local knowledge, gnarled and warty 
 and bulbous and great of girth. You climb to 
 Lorette by a gentle ascent, and below the rock- 
 carved chapel lies a precipice — not an Alpine 
 affair at all, but a reasonable precipice for Bel- 
 gium — say, two or even three hundred feet, and 
 away and away and away, the golden-dimpled 
 hills go changing from the yellowish green of 
 winter grass to the variously-toned grays of the 
 same grass in mid-distance, and then to a blue
 
 I SCHWARTZ: A HISTORY 13 
 
 which grows continually hazier until it melts at 
 the sky-line, and seems half to blend with the 
 dim pallid sapphire of a December sky. 
 
 Here, ' with an ambrosial sense of over-weari- 
 ness failing into sleep/ would I often sit at the 
 foot of the great crucifix, and would smoke the 
 pipe of idleness, a little unmindful, perhaps, of the 
 good London doctor's caution against the misuse 
 of tobacco. It was here that I awoke to the 
 fact one day that the man with the axe was 
 absent. He had slipped away with no good-byes 
 on either side, and I was blissfully alone again. 
 The sweet peace of it, and the quiet of it no 
 tongue or pen can tell. The air was balsamic 
 with the odours of the pines which clothed the 
 hillsides for miles and miles and miles in squares 
 and oblongs and a hundred irregular forms of black- 
 ish green, sometimes snaking in a thin dark line, 
 sometimes topping a crest with a close-cropped 
 hog-mane, and sometimes clustering densely over 
 a whole slope, but always throwing the neighbour-
 
 H SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY I 
 
 ing yellows and greens and grays into a wonder- 
 ful aerial delicacy of contrast. The scarred lime 
 trunks had a bluish gray tone in the winter 
 sunlight, and the carpet at their feet was of 
 Indian red and sienna and brown, of fiercest 
 scarlet and gold and palest lemon colour, of amber 
 and russet and dead green. And everywhere, 
 and in my tired mind most of all, was peace. 
 
 I had been a fortnight at Janenne when my 
 intrusive phantom left me on Lorette. I had 
 made no acquaintances, for I was but feeble at 
 the language, and did not care to encounter the 
 trouble of talking in it. The first friendship I 
 made — I have since spent three years in the 
 delightful place, and have made several friend- 
 ships there — was begun within five minutes of 
 that exquisite moment at which I awoke to the 
 fact that my phantom was away. 
 
 There was not a living creature in sight, and 
 there was not a sound to be heard except the 
 distant tinkle of chisel and stone, and the occa-
 
 I SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY 15 
 
 sional rustle of a falling leaf, until Schwartz, the 
 subject of this history, walked pensively round a 
 corner eighty yards down the avenue, and paused 
 to scratch one ear with a hind foot. He stood 
 for a time with a thoughtful air, looked up the 
 avenue and down the avenue, and then with slow 
 deliberation, and an occasional pause for thought, 
 he walked towards me. When within half a 
 dozen yards he stopped and took good stock of 
 me, with brown eyes overhung by thick grizzled 
 eyebrows. Then he offered a short, interrogative, 
 authoritative bark, a mere monosyllable of inquiry. 
 
 * A stranger/ I responded. ' An invalid 
 stranger.' 
 
 He seemed not only satisfied, but, for some 
 unknown reason, delighted. He wagged the 
 cropped stump of a gray tail, and writhed his 
 whole body with a greeting that had an almost 
 slavish air of charmed propitiation ; and then, 
 without a word on his side or on mine, he 
 mounted the steps which led to the great crucifix,
 
 16 SCHWARTZ: A HISTORY l 
 
 sate down upon the topmost step beside me, and 
 nestled his grizzled head in my lap. I confess 
 that he could have done nothing which would 
 have pleased me more. I have always thought the 
 unconditional and immediate confidence of a dog or 
 a child a sort of certificate to character, though I 
 know well that there is a kind of dog whose 
 native friendliness altogether outruns his discre- 
 tion, and who is doomed from birth to fall into 
 error, and to encounter consequent rebuffs which 
 must be grievous to be borne. 
 
 My new companion wore a collar, and had 
 other signs that distinguished him from the mere 
 mongrel of the village street, but he was of no 
 particular breed. His coat was of a bluish gray, 
 and though soft enough to the touch, had a harsh 
 and spiky aspect. He came nearer to being a 
 broken-haired terrier than anything else, but I 
 seemed to discern half a dozen crosses in him, 
 and a lover of dogs who asked for breed would 
 not have offered sixpence for him.
 
 II 
 
 Somewhere about the year 1560 this tranquil 
 and beautiful country was devastated by a plague 
 which carried off hundreds of its sparse inhabi- 
 tants, and left many villages desolate. The 
 legends of the country-side tell of places in 
 which no human life remained. 
 
 The people of Janenne, headed by the doyen, 
 made a pilgrimage in procession to the shrine of 
 Our Lady of Lorette, and offered to strike a 
 bargain. They promised that if Janenne should 
 be spared from the plague they and their descen- 
 dants for ever would each year repeat that 
 procession in honour of Our Lady of Lorette, and 
 that once in seven years they would appear 
 under arms and fire a salvo. "Whether in conse- 
 
 vol. i c
 
 18 SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY I 
 
 quence of this arrangement or not, Janenne 
 escaped the plague, and from that year to this 
 the promised procession has never been forgotten. 
 In course of time it became less the local mode 
 than it had been to carry arms, and nowadays 
 the great septennial procession can only be gone 
 through after a prodigious deal of drilling and 
 preparation. 
 
 A week or two after my arrival the villagers 
 began to train, under the conduct of a stout 
 military-looking personage, who had been in the 
 Belgian cavalry and gendarmerie, and was now 
 in honourable retirement from war's alarms as a 
 grocer. He traded under the name of Dorn- 
 Casart — the wife's maiden name being tacked to 
 his own, after the manner of the country. This 
 habit, by the way, gives a certain flavour of 
 aristocracy to the trading names over even the 
 smallest shop windows. ' Coqueline - Walhaert, 
 negotiant? is the sign over the establishment 
 wherein a very infirm old woman sells centimes'
 
 I SCHWARTZ: A HISTORY 19 
 
 worth of sweetstuff to the jcunesse of Janenne, 
 whilst her husband works at the quarries. 
 
 Monsieur Dorn is a man with a huge mous- 
 tache, fat cheeks streaked with scarlet lines on a 
 bilious groundwork, and a voice raspy with much 
 Geneva and the habit of command. He rides 
 with the unmistakable seat of an old cavalry 
 man, and his behaviour on horseback was a 
 marked contrast to that of the mounted con- 
 tingent he drilled every day in the open place in 
 front of the hotel. His steed, artfully stimulated 
 by the spur, caracoled, danced, and lashed out 
 with his hind feet, and Monsieur Dorn, with one 
 fist stuck against his own fat ribs, swayed to the 
 motion with admirable nonchalance. His voice, 
 which has the barky tone inseparable from mili- 
 tary command, would ring about the square like 
 the voice of a commander-in-chief, and by the 
 exercise of a practised imagination, I could 
 almost persuade myself that I stood face to face 
 with the horrid front of war.
 
 20 SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY I 
 
 When Monsieur Dorn was not drilling his 
 brigade he was generally to be found at the Cafe 
 de la Kegence, smoking a huge meerschaum with 
 a cherry wood stem and sipping Geneva. Even 
 in this comparative retirement the halo of his 
 office clung about him, and seemed to hold men 
 off from a too familiar intercourse ; but one after- 
 noon I saw him unbending there. He was nearly 
 always accompanied by a dog, spotlessly white, 
 the most ladylike of her species I remember to 
 have seen. Her jet-black beady eyes and jet- 
 black glittering nose set off the snowy whiteness 
 of her coat, and were in turn set off by it. She 
 had a refined, coquettish, mincing walk, which 
 alone was enough to bespeak the agreeable sense 
 she had of her own charms. Perhaps a satiric 
 observer of manners might have thought her 
 more like a lady's-maid than a lady. A sugges- 
 tion of pertness in her beady eyes, and a certain 
 superciliousness of bearing were mingled with a 
 coquetry not displeasing to one who surveyed
 
 I SCHWARTZ : A HISTOEY 21 
 
 her from the human height. To look important 
 is pretty generally to feel important, but is, by 
 no means, to be important. We discern this 
 fact with curious clearness when we look at other 
 people, but it is nowhere quite so evident as in 
 what we call the brute creation. (As if we 
 didn't belong to it !) Perhaps there are intelli- 
 gences who look at us with just such a pitying 
 amusement and analysis — our prosperous relatives, 
 who started earlier in the race of life than we 
 did, and met with better chances. 
 
 In spite of airs and graces, natural and 
 acquired, Lil's claims to purity of race were 
 small, though, like my older acquaintance, 
 Schwartz, she was more a broken-haired terrier 
 than anything else. Schwartz was simply and 
 purely hourgeois. He had no airs and no pre- 
 tensions ; but Lil, whatever her genuine claims 
 may have been, was of another stamp and 
 fashion. 
 
 It was Lil who was the cause of Monsieur
 
 22 SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY I 
 
 Dorn's unbending. The fat old gendarme was 
 putting her through a set of tricks, which she 
 executed^ with complete aplomb and intelligence. 
 There was nothing violent in these exercises ; 
 nothing a dog of the best breeding in the world 
 could have felt to derogate from dignity. She 
 was much petted and applauded for her per- 
 formances, and was rewarded by two or three 
 lumps of sugar, which she ate without any of the 
 vulgar haste characteristic of most dogs in their 
 dealings with sweetmeats. 
 
 The language of the peasantry hereabouts is 
 that same Walloon tongue in which old Froissart 
 wrote his Chronicles. It is little more comprehen- 
 sible to the average Frenchman than to the aver- 
 age Englishman, but its vocabulary is restricted, 
 and the people who talk it have enriched (or 
 corrupted) it with many words of French. When 
 the loungers in the cafe began to talk, as they 
 did presently, it amused me to listen to this 
 unknown tongue ; and whenever I heard ' la
 
 l SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY 23 
 
 procession ' named, I enjoyed much the kind of 
 refreshment Mr. Gargery experienced when he 
 encountered a J.O., Jo, in the course of his 
 general reading. La procession was not merely 
 the staple of the village talk, but the warp and 
 woof of it, and any intruding strand of foreign 
 fancy was cut short at the lips of him who strove 
 to spin it into the web of conversation. I myself 
 ventured an inquiry or two, for all but the most 
 ignorant speak French of a sort. Monsieur Dorn 
 accepted a glass of pequet at my request (a fire- 
 water, for a dose of which one halfpenny is charged, 
 and upon which the unaccustomed stranger may 
 intoxicate himself madly at an outlay of five- 
 pence), and the fat and stately old fellow told me 
 all about the origin and meaning of the pious 
 form the village was then preparing to fulfil. 
 He made the kindest allowance for my limited 
 powers of speech, and bounteously fed my native 
 sense of retiring humility with patronage. 
 
 The door of the cafe was open to the mild, fir-
 
 24 SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY I 
 
 scented December air, though a crackling fire 
 burnt noisily in the thin-ribbed stove. Lil made 
 occasional excursions to the open doorway, looking 
 out upon the passers-by with a keen alertness. 
 She had some time returned from one of these 
 inspections, and had curled herself at her master's 
 feet, when I heard a singular and persistent tap- 
 ping upon the unclothed floor, and looking round 
 caught sight of my friend Schwartz, who was 
 making a crouching and timid progress toward 
 us, and was wagging his cropped tail with such 
 vehemence that it sounded on the boards like a 
 light hammer on a carpeted flooring. At first I 
 fancied that he recognised me, and I held out to 
 him an encouraging hand, of which he took no 
 notice. That air of propitiatory humility which 
 I had seen in him when we had first encountered 
 on Lorette was exaggerated to a slavish adulation. 
 There is no living creature but a dog who would 
 not have been ashamed to show such a mixture 
 of transport and self-depreciation. He fawned,
 
 I SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY 25 
 
 he writhed, he rapped his tail upon the floor in 
 a sustained crescendo. The dumb heart had no 
 language for its own delight and humility. Any- 
 body who takes pleasure in dogs has seen the 
 sort of thing scores and scores of times. It was 
 the quality of intensity which made it remarkable 
 in Schwartz. 
 
 Lil, for whom this display of joy and humble- 
 ness was made, was altogether unmoved by it. 
 She was not merely regardless of it, but osten- 
 tatiously disdainful. She took a coquettish 
 lady's - maidish amble to the door, passing 
 Schwartz by the way, and yawned as she looked 
 out upon the street. Schwartz fawned after her 
 to the door, and with a second yawn she repassed 
 him, and returned to lie at the feet of the fat old 
 gendarme. The absurd little drama of coquetry 
 and worship went on until the old fellow arose 
 with a friendly Ion jour, to me, and a whistle to 
 Lil, who followed him with a supercilious nose in 
 the air. The despised Schwartz stood a while,
 
 26 SCHWARTZ : A HISTOIiY I 
 
 and then set out after her at a ridiculous three- 
 legged run, but before he had gone ten yards he 
 stopped ^short, looked after the retreating fair in 
 silence, and then walked off with a dispirited 
 aspect in the opposite direction. 
 
 So far as I could tell, my shadowy enemy 
 with the axe had taken himself away for good 
 and all, but I was so fearful of recalling him that 
 I kept altogether idle, and in other respects 
 nursed and coddled myself with a constant as- 
 siduity. But it is a hard thing for a man who 
 has accustomed himself to constant mental em- 
 ployment to go without it, and in the absence of 
 pens, ink, and paper, books and journals, the pro- 
 cession bade fair to be a perfect godsend. Even 
 when the inhabitants of the village took to rising 
 at four o'clock in the morning, and fanfaronaded 
 with ill-blown bugles, and flaring torches, and a 
 dreadful untiring drum about the street, I forbore 
 to grumble, and when on Sundays they turned 
 out in a body after mass to see their own military
 
 I SCHWARTZ: A HISTORY 27 
 
 section drilled in the Place of the Hotel de Ville, 
 one bored valetudinarian welcomed them heartily. 
 The military section had got down uniforms from 
 one of the Brussels theatres, — busbies and 
 helmets, and the gloriously comic hats of the 
 garde civile, — dragoon tunics, hussar jackets, in- 
 fantry shell -jackets, cavalry stable - jackets, for- 
 esters' boots, dragoon jack-boots, stage piratical 
 boots with wide tops to fit the thigh that drooped 
 about the ankles, — trousers of every sort, from 
 blue broadcloth, gold - striped, to the homely 
 fustian, — and a rare show they made. They went 
 fours right or fours left with a fine military 
 jangle, and sometimes went fours right and fours 
 left at the same time, with results disastrous to 
 military order. Then it was good to see and 
 hear the fat Dorn as he caracoled in a field- 
 marshal's uniform, and barked his orders at the 
 disordered crowd like a field -marshal to the 
 manner born. 
 
 Monsieur Dorn being thus gloriously lifted
 
 28 SCHWAETZ : A HISTORY I 
 
 into the range of the public eye, Lil seemed to 
 take added airs of importance. I say seemed, but 
 that is only because of the foolish and ignorant 
 habit into which I was born and educated. Ever 
 since I can remember, people have been telling 
 stories to prove that dogs have some sort of in- 
 telligence, as if — except to the most stupid and 
 the blindest — the thing had ever stood in need 
 of proof. There is nothing much more fatal 
 to the apprehension of a fact than the constant 
 causeless repetition of it. And then the tales of 
 the intelligence of dogs are. told as a general 
 thing with a sort of wide-eyed wonder, so that the 
 dog's very advocates contrive to impress their 
 readers with the belief that their commonplace 
 bit of history is remarkable. 
 
 Of course there are clever dogs and dull dogs, 
 just as there are sages and idiots, but any dog 
 who was not a fool would have known and recog- 
 nised his master's splendour and importance if he 
 had belonged at this epoch to Monsieur Dorn.
 
 I SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY 29 
 
 Lil saw him sitting up there in vivid colours, 
 heard him shouting in a voice of authority, and 
 saw people answer to that voice. There was not 
 a Christian in the crowd who had a better under- 
 standing of the situation. To see her running in 
 and out amongst the horses' feet, ordering the 
 sham dragoons and hussars about in her own 
 language, was to know she understood the thing, 
 and had invested herself with some of her master's 
 glory. Wherever she went, in and out and about, 
 Schwartz, with his meek spikes raging in all 
 directions, followed, close at heel. Almost every- 
 body has seen the loud aggressive swaggering 
 boy with the meek admiring small boy in his 
 train. The small boy glorifies the other in his 
 mind, setting him on a level with Three-Fingered 
 Jack, or Goliath's conqueror, and the aggressive 
 boy, feeling rather than understanding the other's 
 reverence, does his best to look as if he deserved 
 it. To see Lil swagger and to hear her bark, and 
 to see the foolish humble Schwartz follow her,
 
 30 SCHWAETZ : A HISTOEY I 
 
 admiring her, believing in her, utterly borne away 
 by her insolent pretence that the whole show was 
 got up by her orders — to observe this was to see 
 one half the world in little. 
 
 On other days Lil was as other dogs, except, 
 perhaps, to the love-blinded eyes of Schwartz, but 
 on Sundays, so long as the drills for the proces- 
 sion lasted, the field was all her own. One or 
 two of her companions, carried away by her ex- 
 ample, dared to run amongst the horses' feet and 
 bark. They were promptly kicked into the ring 
 of spectators, and Lil was left alone in her glory. 
 Of course it all went with his own confiding 
 nature, and the state of complete slavery in which 
 he lived, to persuade Schwartz of her greatness. 
 She deserves at least that one truth should be 
 admitted. She never gave her admirer the least 
 encouragement so far as I could see. She never 
 in a chance encounter in the street paused to ex- 
 change good -morrow. She never so much as 
 turned a head in his direction. She tolerated his
 
 I SCHWARTZ: A HISTORY 31 
 
 presence and that was all. But wherever she 
 went he shadowed her. He was not obtrusive, 
 but was content to keep at heel, and to be 
 permitted to admire. I have seen him sit 
 for half an hour on a doorstep, a canine monu- 
 ment of patience, waiting for her to come out, 
 and I have seen her travel about the Place 
 in apparently purposeless zigzags and circles 
 for the mere pride and vanity of knowing how 
 closely he would follow her least reasonable 
 movements. 
 
 A week or two before the grand event came 
 off there was a prodigious excitement in Janenne. 
 An idea, originating in the military spirit of 
 Monsieur Dorn, had been industriously put about, 
 a subscription had been set on foot for it, a com- 
 mittee had been appointed to superintend its 
 working, and now the glorious fancy was actually 
 translated into fact. The procession was to be 
 supplemented by artillery, and now here was a 
 time-eaten old gun, mounted on a worm-eaten old
 
 32 SCHWARTZ: A HISTORY I 
 
 carriage, and trailed in harness of rope by two 
 stalwart Flemish horses. Here also was gun- 
 powder enough to wreck the village, and the Jan- 
 ennois, who for a moral people have a most 
 astounding love of noise, were out at earliest 
 dawn of light on Sunday morning to see the gun 
 fired. The first firing was supposed to be an 
 experiment, and everybody was warned to a safe 
 distance when the gun was loaded, whilst Mon- 
 sieur Dorn arranged a train of powder, and set a 
 slow match in connection with it. When the 
 bang came and the old iron stood the strain 
 everybody went wild with joy, and even 
 Monsieur Dorn himself was so carried away 
 by the general enthusiasm that he tested the 
 piece all morning. It was finally discovered 
 that the powder was exhausted, and the hat 
 had to be sent round again for a new sub- 
 scription. 
 
 The annual procession is far and away the 
 greatest event of the year at Janenne, and the
 
 I SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY 33 
 
 septennial procession would of itself be enough to 
 satisfy any resident in the village that he had 
 lived if he had but seen it once. Nobody 
 dreamed of spoiling the procession for the sake of 
 a cart-load or so of gunpowder, and the hat was 
 soon filled. Xext Sunday Janenne enjoyed a 
 new series of experiments on the big gun, and 
 what with the banging of the drum, and the blow- 
 ing of the bugle, and the flaming of torches in the 
 dark morning, and the banging of the big gun 
 from dawn till noon, and the clatter and glitter 
 of the drill in the after part of the short winter 
 day, the atmosphere of the village was altogether 
 warlike. 
 
 The big gun gave Lil an added claim on the 
 veneration of her admirer. On the morning of 
 the second firms: she came demurelv down to the 
 field in which the artillery experiments were 
 conducted, with an air of knowing all about it, 
 and Schwartz, as usual, pursued her. The gun 
 was sponged and loaded, and the charge was 
 
 VOL. I D
 
 34 SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY i 
 
 rammed home under Monsieur Dorn's supervision, 
 Lil standing gravely by, and Schwartz grovelling 
 in her neighbourhood. Then the old gendarme 
 himself primed the piece, and taking a torch 
 from a boy who stood near him applied it to 
 the touch -hole. Out at the muzzle sprang 
 the answering flame and roar, and away went 
 Schwartz as if he had been projected by the 
 force of the powder. Panic declared itself in 
 every hair, and his usual foolish three-legged 
 amble was exchanged for a pace like that of a 
 greyhound. He had gone but a hundred yards 
 at most, when reason resumed her seat. He 
 stopped and turned, and after a little pause came 
 back with an evident shamefacedness. Lil had 
 stood her ground without the slightest sign of 
 fear, and when Schwartz returned she took to 
 looking so triumphantly, and superintended the 
 subsequent operations with so much authority, 
 that I am profoundly convinced of her intent to 
 persuade her slavish follower that this was some
 
 I SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY 35 
 
 new and astonishing form of bark of which she 
 alone possessed the secret. 
 
 Schwartz was most probably willing to believe 
 anything she told him. It is the way of some 
 natures to confide, and it is the way of others to 
 presume upon their confidence.
 
 Ill 
 
 Janenne is on the outskirts of the Forest 
 Country, and in the shooting season the chasseur 
 is a familiar personage. He arrives by evening 
 train or diligence, half a dozen strong. He sups 
 and betakes himself to the singing of comic 
 songs with choruses, moistening and mellowing 
 his vocal chords with plenteous burgundy. Long 
 after everybody else has gone to bed, he tramps 
 in chorus along the echoing Unclothed corridor, 
 and he and his chums open bedroom doors to 
 shout Belgian scraps of facetice at each other, or 
 to cast prodigious boots upon the sounding boards. 
 Then long before anybody else has a mind to rise, he 
 is up again promenading the corridor like a multi- 
 plied copy of the giant in the Castle of Otranto. He
 
 I SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY 37 
 
 rolls away in the darkness with the cracking of 
 whips and jingling of bells, and sleep and silence 
 settle down again. At night he is back to supper 
 with tales of big game multitudinous as Laban's 
 flocks, and a bag unaccountably empty. That 
 same evening he is away to desk or counter or 
 studio in Brussels, Antwerp, or Liege, and Jan- 
 enne falls back into its normal peace. 
 
 It was mid-December, and the snow was fall- 
 ing in powdery flakes, when a sportsman alighted 
 at the Hotel des Postes, and at the first glance I 
 knew him for a countryman. He was a fine, 
 frank, free-hearted young fellow, one of the most 
 easily likable of youngsters, and we were on 
 friendly terms together before the first evening 
 was over. He knew a number of people in the 
 neighbourhood, had received a dozen invitations 
 to shoot, or thereabouts, and meant to put up 
 three weeks at Janenne, so he told me, shooting 
 when sport was to be had, and on other days 
 tramping about the country. He was accom-
 
 38 SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY I 
 
 panied by a bull -terrier, who answered to the 
 name of Scraper, a handsome creature of his 
 kind, with one eye in permanent mourning. 
 
 ' Of course he's no good/ said the young 
 fellow, in answer to an observation of mine, \ but 
 then he's perfectly tamed, and therefore he's no 
 harm. He'll stay where he's told ; and I believe 
 the poor beggar would break his heart if I left 
 him behind. Wouldn't you, old chap ? ' 
 
 The young sportsman went away to the chase 
 next morning, taking his bull-terrier with him, and 
 returning at night reported Scraper's perfect good 
 behaviour. In the course of that evening's talk I 
 spoke of certain peculiarities I had noticed in the 
 formation of the country, and my new acquaintance 
 proposed that on an idle day of his next week 
 we should take a walk of exploration. When the 
 day came we started together, and I showed him 
 some of the curiosities of nature I had noticed. 
 
 Eound and about Janenne the world is hollow. 
 The hills are mere bubbles, and the earth is
 
 t SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY 39 
 
 honeycombed with caverns. By the side of the 
 road which leads to Houssy a river accompanies 
 the traveller's steps, purling and singing, and 
 talking secrets (as shallow pebbly-bedded stream? 
 have a way of doing), and on a sudden the 
 traveller misses it. There, before him, is a river 
 bed, wide, white, and stony, but where is the 
 river ? If he be a curious traveller he will re- 
 trace his steps, and will find the stream racing 
 with some impetuosity towards a bend, where it 
 dwindles by apparent miracle into nothing. The 
 curious traveller, naturally growing more curious 
 than common in the presence of this phenomena, 
 will, at some risk to his neck, descend the bank, 
 and make inquiry into the reason for the dis- 
 appearance of the stream. He will see nothing 
 to account for it, but he will probably arrive at 
 the conclusion that there are fissures in the 
 river's bed, through which the water falls to feed 
 the subterranean stream, of which he is pretty 
 certain to have heard or read. If he will walk
 
 40 SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY I 
 
 back a mile, against the course of the stream, will 
 cross the main street of Janenne, strike the 
 Montcourtois Eoad there, and cross the river 
 bridge, he will see a cavern lipped by the flowing 
 water, and in that cavern, only a foot or so below 
 the level of the open-air stream, he will find its 
 subterranean continuation. It has worked back 
 upon itself in this secret way, by what strange 
 courses no man knows or can guess. But that 
 the stream is the same has been proved by a 
 device at once ingenious and simple. Colouring 
 matter of various sorts has from time to time 
 been thrown into the water at its place of dis- 
 appearance, and the tinted stream has poured, 
 hours and hours afterwards, through the cavern, 
 which is only a mile away, and stands so near 
 the earlier stream that in times of rain the waters 
 mingle there. 
 
 On the sides of the hills, and in the brush- 
 wood which clothes their feet, one finds all manner 
 of holes and caves and crevices, some of them
 
 I SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY 41 
 
 very shallow, and some of them of unknown 
 depth. In the Bois de Janenne alone there are 
 four or five of them. 
 
 All this has strictly to do with the history of 
 Schwartz, as will by and by be seen. 
 
 "When heavy rains fall the river is so swollen 
 that the underground call upon its resources fails 
 to drain it, and it foams above the fissures in full 
 volume, so wild and deep that a passer-by would 
 never guess of the curious trick of nature which 
 is here being played. But the season being 
 exceptionally dry, I was able to show my find, 
 and from the spot of the stream's disappearance 
 I led my acquaintance to the cavern. Here 
 prowling about in a light-footed and adventurous 
 fashion the young Englishman found a hole in 
 the wall of stone, and, venturing into it, dis- 
 covered to his great delight a passage which 
 seemed to lead into the very entrails of the hill. 
 He proposed instantly to explore this, and I 
 having that morning purchased of the local
 
 42 SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY I 
 
 tobacconist a box of Italian vestas, each three or 
 four inches long, and calculated to burn for 
 several minutes, and having the same in my 
 pocket at the moment, we set out together on a 
 journey of adventure. The passage varied in 
 width from six to three feet, and in height from 
 eight feet upwards. The faint illumination of 
 the big wax vestas often failed to touch the roof. 
 
 The way was sometimes over ankle deep in a 
 thick mud, and sometimes strewn with fragments 
 of rock which had fallen from the roof ; but we 
 went on gaily until we came to a great slippery 
 boulder, which blocked the passage for some three 
 feet in height. My companion was in act to 
 clamber over this, when the light I carried pinched 
 my thumb and finger with sudden heat, and I 
 dropped it on to the ground. I struck another, 
 and found the youngster perched upon the 
 boulder. 
 
 ' Wait a moment,' said I, ' and let us see what 
 is beyond. There may be a deepish hole there.'
 
 i SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY 43 
 
 We leaned over, and could see nothing. My 
 companion got down from the boulder with a 
 grave look. 
 
 1 1 was just going to jump when you spoke,' 
 he said. ' Lucky I didn't. I wonder how deep it 
 is?' 
 
 "We hunted about for a stone, and by and by 
 found one about the size of a man's head. This 
 the youngster tossed over the boulder into the 
 darkness, and we stood looking at each other, by 
 the little clear-burning light of the wax match. 
 I do not know how long we stood there, for time 
 has a knack of magnifying itself beyond belief 
 in such conditions, but it was long, long before 
 an awful hollow boom came rolling to our ears 
 from the depth. We turned without a word, 
 and stumbled back towards the daylight, and when 
 we reached it I looked at the young Englishman 
 and saw that all the roses had faded from his 
 healthy young cheeks, and that he was as gray 
 as ashes.
 
 44 SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY I 
 
 ' I was going to jump when you spoke/ he 
 said. ' Precious lucky for me I didn't.' 
 
 I congratulated him very heartily on not hav- 
 ing jumped, and our search for natural wonders 
 being ended we went back to the hotel. "We 
 made inquiry there — at first in vain — about this 
 inner cavern, but at last we came across the 
 Garde Champetre of the district, who told us that 
 the depth was unknown. He and some of his 
 friends had had the curiosity to try to measure 
 it, but they never had rope enough. 
 
 It befell on the morning of the next day that 
 I wandered out alone, and in the course of the 
 first score yards encountered Schwartz, who was 
 demonstrative of friendly civilities. I returned 
 his salutations, and he gave me to understand in 
 his own too-humble manner that he would like 
 to accompany me. I let him know that I should 
 be delighted by his society, and away we went 
 together. The ground was firm with last night's 
 frost and musical to the sabots of peasants and
 
 t SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY 45 
 
 the iron-shod feet of horses. The hills and fields 
 were covered with a powdery snow that threw 
 their grays into a dark relief, and the air was so 
 still that I could hear the bell-like tinkle of chisel 
 and stone from the quarry nearly a mile away. 
 We entered the Bois de Janenne together, and 
 wandered through its branchy solitudes by many 
 winding pathways. There is a main road run- 
 ning through this wood, cut by order of the com- 
 mune for the pleasure of visitors, and the middle 
 of this road was white with a thin untrodden 
 snow. On either side this ribbon of white lay a 
 narrower ribbon of gold where the pines had shed 
 their yellow needles, and the overhanging boughs 
 had guarded them from the falling "snow. The 
 ground ivy was of all imaginable colours, but 
 only yielded its secrets on a close examination, 
 and did not call upon the eye like some of the 
 louder reds and yellows which still clung to the 
 trees. Here and there the fasain burned like a 
 flame with its vivid scarlet berries — chapeau de
 
 46 SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY I 
 
 cur4 the country people call them, though the 
 colour is a little too gay for less than a cardinal's 
 wearing. For the most part the undergrowth 
 was bare, and the branches were either purple or 
 of the tone of a ripe filbert, so that the atmos- 
 phere, with the reflected dull golds and bluish-reds 
 and reddish-blues, was in a swimming maze like 
 that of a sunset distance, though the eye could 
 scarcely pierce twenty yards into the thick-grown 
 tangle. 
 
 Schwartz and I rambled along, now and then 
 exchanging a sign of friendly interest, and in a 
 while we left the main path and wandered where 
 we would. Suddenly Schwartz began to hunt 
 and sniff and bark on what I supposed to be the 
 recent trace of a rabbit or a hare, and I stood 
 still to watch him. He worried industriously 
 here and there until he disappeared behind a 
 clump of brushwood, and then I heard a sudden 
 ' Yowk ! ' of unmistakable terror. After this 
 there was dead silence. I called, but there was
 
 I SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY 47 
 
 not even the rustle of a leaf in answer. I waited 
 a while and called again, but still no answer 
 came. Not in the least guessing what had be- 
 fallen the dog, I mounted the hillside and came 
 to the clump of bushes behind which he had dis- 
 appeared. There I found a hole some three feet 
 wide and two in height, a hole with sides of moist 
 earth, formed like an irregularly-shaped funnel, 
 and affording at its farther end little more than 
 room enough for a creature of Schwartz's size to 
 pass. At the narrow end the earth was freshly 
 disturbed. 
 
 I shouted down tins reversed trumpet of a 
 hole. I listened after every call. I explored 
 the place so far as I could with a six-foot wand 
 cut from a near tree. I heard no movement, no 
 whine of distress, and I touched nothing with the 
 wand except the roof of the cavern into which 
 poor Schwartz had fallen. At length I gave him 
 up for dead, remembering the adventure of the 
 day before, the terrible space of time which had
 
 48 SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY i 
 
 elapsed before the echo of the fallen boulder came 
 booming from the abyss, and thinking it as likely 
 as not ^that Schwartz had fallen to an equal 
 depth. When I got back to the hotel I told the 
 tale as well as I could, and one of the servants 
 took the news to Schwartz's master. 
 
 When once this lamentable accident had hap- 
 pened, it became surprising to learn how fre- 
 quently its like had happened before. There was 
 scarcely a sportsman in the village who had not 
 his story of some such disappearance of a dog 
 whilst out shooting. The poor beast would be- 
 come excited in pursuit of game, would dash 
 headlong into a set of bushes and emerge no 
 more. Then a moment's examination would re- 
 veal the fatal cave. I am certain that I heard a 
 good half-score of such histories. The cave, by 
 the way, was not always fatal, for I heard of cases 
 in which the dog had been known to find his 
 way out of the underground labyrinth, and return 
 home dreadfully thin and hungry, but otherwise
 
 I SCHWARTZ : A HISTOEY 49 
 
 undamaged. These cases gave me some faint 
 hope for Schwartz, but as day after day went by 
 the hope faded, and I made up my mind that I 
 had seen the last of him. I was sorry to think 
 so, for he had been very much a friend and a 
 companion. 
 
 vol. I
 
 IV 
 
 It was curious to notice how that unquestioning 
 allegiance and admiration which the missing 
 Schwartz had been used to bestow on Lil was 
 now bestowed by her on the new-comer who 
 answered to the name of Scraper, and how in 
 answer to all her advances and endearments 
 Scraper remained scornful and unreceptive. One 
 knows a hundred poems and legends in which 
 this form of vengeance is taken upon the cruel 
 fair ; in which the proud lady who has scorned 
 the humble and faithful heart lives to be scorned 
 in turn. Scraper, probably unconscious of his 
 mission as avenger, fulfilled it none the less on 
 that account. 
 
 His master, being an Englishman, had the
 
 r SCHWAKTZ : A HISTOEY 51 
 
 common English reverence for the Sunday, and 
 would not shoot on that day, though by his con- 
 scientious abstention he missed, undoubtedly, the 
 best battue the country-side afforded. We had a 
 brief discussion as to the morality and propriety 
 of the procession, and I pointed out to him that 
 notwithstanding the military element by which 
 it was so strongly marked, it was purely sacerdotal 
 in origin and pious in intent, but he merely re- 
 plied that as a form of religious exercise for a 
 Sunday it struck him as being jolly rum. He 
 added shortly afterwards that whether he looked 
 at it or not the coves would do it, and that he 
 therefore felt at liberty to watch them. 
 
 Scraper displayed the profoundest interest in 
 the business, and took upon himself the organisa- 
 tion of the whole affair, barking with so much 
 authority, and careering about the cavalry squad- 
 ron with such untiring energy that he threw Lil's 
 efforts in that way into the shade, and in the 
 course of a mere half-hour had superseded her. 
 
 WtfVERBOT OF H1W0II
 
 52 SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY I 
 
 Then, just as Schwartz had been used, with every 
 evidence of faith, to follow Lil, regarding her as 
 the very mainspring of the military movement, 
 Lil followed Scraper. Mr. Herbert Spencer has 
 shown that, in spite of the apparent unreasonable- 
 ness of the fact, humbug and credulity are sworn 
 companions. The savage mystery man, who 
 knows what a humbug he himself is, is the first 
 to yield allegiance and faith to the abler humbug, 
 who has more tricks or bolder invention than he. 
 So, Lil's groundless pretensions of a week ago 
 did not seem in the least to prevent her from 
 being imposed upon by the groundless pretensions 
 of Scraper, much as one might have thought her 
 own career of imposture would have set her upon 
 her guard. She had caught that very fawning 
 method of appeal for a kind regard which had 
 once distinguished Schwartz, and it was obvious 
 that Scraper could make no claim to which she 
 would not be ready to give adhesion. It is in 
 the very nature of poetical justice that it satisfies
 
 I SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY 53 
 
 the emotions, and I was not displeased to see 
 affairs take this sudden turn, to view the hard 
 and despiteful heart thus humbled. 
 
 It was on a Friday that Schwartz's chase had 
 ended so disastrously. It was on the following 
 Sunday that Lil laid down the honours of com- 
 mand at the feet of the new-comer. It was on 
 the Sunday following, the ninth day clear from 
 the date of the mischance, that the great event of 
 the seven years took place. My young acquaint- 
 ance had two or three days free of engagements, 
 and he spent these in watching the preparations 
 for the procession. He spoke French with a 
 fluency and purity which excited my envy, and 
 he spent most of his spare time among the village 
 people, who talked and thought and dreamed of 
 nothing but the procession. "Wherever he went 
 Scraper accompanied him, and wherever Scraper 
 went Lil was to be seen following in fascinated 
 admiration. 
 
 For a whole week the drum had known but
 
 54 SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY I 
 
 little rest. I never learned the purpose of the 
 proceeding, but every day and all day, from long 
 before daylight till long after dark, somebody 
 marched about the village and rattled unceasingly 
 upon the drum. It could not possibly have been 
 one man who did it all, for the energies of no one 
 man that ever lived could have been equal to the 
 task. Most of the time it was far away, and it 
 only made two daily promenades past the hotel, 
 but whenever I listened for it I could hear it, 
 beating the same unweary rataplan. Then at 
 intervals all day and every day, the big gun 
 boomed and the clarion blared until I used to 
 dream that I was back at Plevna or the Shipka 
 Pass, and could not get my " copy " to London 
 and New York because Monsieur Dorn had filled 
 the Houssy Wood with Cossacks from Janenne. 
 It may be supposed that all this charivari was 
 but an evil thing for a man as much in need of 
 rest as I was, but I verily believe that the noise 
 and bustle of the preparations, though they robbed
 
 I SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY 55 
 
 Hie now and then of an hour of morning sleep, 
 were almost as useful to me as the idleness I en- 
 joyed, and the tranquil country air into which I 
 could drive or wander afoot whenever the fancy 
 for perfect quiet came upon me. 
 
 At last the great day dawned, and the great 
 event dawned earlier than the day. At five 
 o'clock the noise of drum and clarion began, and 
 the light of torches flared on the painted fronts 
 of houses — yellow and pink and blue — in the 
 quaint old village street. A little later a band 
 came by with shattering brass and booming drum, 
 and for an hour or so the whole place was in a fer- 
 ment. The cavalry came clattering into the Place, 
 the hoarse voice of Monsieur Dorn barked through 
 the orders which had by this time grown conven- 
 tional, and his squadron jingled for the last time 
 for seven years through the movements he had 
 taught them at the expense of so much time and 
 lung power. Then a strange foreboding sort of 
 quiet, an unnatural tranquillity, settled upon every-
 
 56 SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY I 
 
 thing and continued until near upon the hour of 
 ten. A long waggon drawn by four oxen excited, 
 by the freight it bore, a momentary curiosity, and 
 brought faces to doors and windows. The air 
 was keen to-day, and we were at the very season 
 of mid-winter, but in the waggon which the four 
 slow oxen dragged through the streets of Janenne 
 were a dozen lofty shrubs reaching to a height of 
 eight or nine feet at least, the which shrubs were 
 one mass of exotic-looking blossom. I discovered 
 later on that they were nothing more than a set 
 of young pines with artificial paper flowers at- 
 tached to every twig, but the effect as they went 
 down the wintry street in their clothing of gold 
 and rose and white with the live green of the fir 
 peeping through the wealth of bloom was quite 
 an astonishment in its way. These decorated 
 shrubs were set at the church porch, and seemed 
 to fill the whole of that part of the street with 
 colour and light. 
 
 When the procession came at last there was
 
 I SCHWAKTZ : A HISTORY 57 
 
 one curious thing about it. Such a crowd of 
 people — for Janenne took part in it — that there 
 was scarcely anybody left to look at it. But 
 then the processionists had the pleasure of look- 
 ing at each other. The band came first, in blue 
 blouse and clean white trousers. Then came 
 the soldiery, a motley crew, with Monsieur Dorn 
 at their head; drawn sword in hand, and next to 
 him a personage who might haye been translated 
 clean from Astley's — a gentleman in long hose, 
 with a flower on each shoe, and a hat of red 
 yelyet shaped like a bread tray, decorated with 
 prodigious coloured feathers, and a slashed doublet 
 gay with many knots of bright ribbon. Years 
 and years ago Janenne had a Count and a 
 chdteau. The ruins of the chateau still kept gray 
 guard oyer the yillage street ; but there is not 
 eyen a ruin left of the old family. But in the 
 day when Our Lady of Lorette stayed the local 
 pestilence the existing Count of Janenne was 
 pious enough to ride in the promised procession ;
 
 58 SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY i 
 
 and for a century or so the magnate of the 
 village and its neighbourhood was never absent 
 from the; demonstration of thanksgiving. In a 
 while, however, the Counts of Janenne took to 
 wildish ways, and, leaving the home of their 
 ancestors, went away to Paris and led extrava- 
 gant lives there, gambling and drinking, and 
 squandering their substance in other and even 
 more foolish fashions, and at last there ceased to 
 be estates of Janenne to draw upon, or even 
 Counts of Janenne to draw. But before things 
 came to this pass the absentee Counts had always 
 sent a representative to join the procession to the 
 shrine of Our Lady of Lorette ; and it has come 
 about that the legend has clung in the popular 
 fancy even unto the present day. Somebody — 
 anybody — gets himself up in theatrical guise, 
 and rides at the head of the military forces, 
 between the first rank and the commander-in- 
 chief, as the representative of that extinct great 
 house. On this occasion it was a red-cheeked
 
 I SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY 59 
 
 shy young man, cousin to the chambermaid of 
 the Hotel des Postes, a peasant proprietor who 
 farmed, and still farms, some ten or a dozen 
 hectares of sour land on the road to Montcouitoia 
 The red-cheeked shy young man's female cousin 
 exchanged a red-cheeked, shame-faced, rustic grin 
 with him as he rode by, and the young man, in 
 imitation of Monsieur Dorn, made his horse 
 caracole, but being less versed in horsemanship 
 than the old gendarme, had to hold on ignomini- 
 ously by the mane in payment for his own 
 temerity. 
 
 Following the military came a long array of 
 little girls in white muslin, with sashes blue or 
 red. Half a dozen nuns kept watch over them, 
 pacing sombre in white head-dresses and black 
 gowns by the side of all that smiling troop of 
 glad hearts and childish faces. All the little 
 girls carried bannerets of bright colour, and all 
 went bareheaded, after the manner of the 
 district, where no woman, short of the highest
 
 60 SCHWARTZ : A HISTOKY I 
 
 fashion, ever permits herself to wear hat or 
 bonnet, except when going to mass or upon a 
 railway journey. White childish locks, braided 
 and shining, red locks, brown locks, black locks, 
 with bright faces under all, went streaming by, 
 and then a solemn priest or two headed a 
 rambling host of lads with well-scrubbed cheeks 
 and clean collars, and decent raiment of church- 
 going Sunday black. Then came a flock of 
 young women in white muslin, very starched and 
 stiff, with blue bows and blue sashes. In front 
 of these two stalwart wenches bore a napping 
 banner, inscribed ' La Jeunesse de Janenne ' ; and 
 closing up the rank of Janenne's youth and 
 rustic beauty came half a dozen chosen damsels, 
 big limbed and strong, bearing on their shoulders 
 a huge waxen statue of Our Lady of Lorette, and 
 in her arms a crowned child, she herself being 
 crowned with glittering tinsel, and robed in a 
 glowing and diaphanous stuff, which only half 
 revealed the white satin and spangles of the
 
 I SCHWARTZ: A HISTORY 61 
 
 dress below it. Then a number of chubby- 
 cheeked little boys in semi- ecclesiastical costume, 
 improvised — no doubt under clerical supervision 
 — by careful hands at home. Each little boy 
 earned a fumiDg censer, and it was not difficult 
 to see that they were well pleased with them- 
 selves and their office. After them came the 
 doyen in full ecclesiastical costume, a little tawdry 
 perhaps, for the village is but poor and with the 
 best heart in the world can only imitate the real 
 splendours from afar. Then following the doyen 
 (who, by the way, marched under a canopy like 
 the roof of an old-fashioned four-post bedstead) 
 came the male choir of the church, chanting a 
 musical service, which harmonised indifferently 
 with the strains of the military band in front. 
 Then the big gun, drawn by the two big 
 Flemish horses. Then Jacques, Jules, Andre, 
 Francois, Chariot, Pierre, Joseph, Jean, and all 
 the rest, in sabots, short trousers, and blue 
 blouses, marching bareheaded with reverent air,
 
 62 SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY I 
 
 and with them Julie, and Fifine, and Nana, and 
 Adele, and other feminine relatives, all in their 
 Sunday best, and all devout in mien. Then, at 
 a little distance — the most astonishing and un- 
 looked-for tail to all this village splendour and 
 devoutness — Schwartz. 
 
 Schwartz himself, but Schwartz so changed, 
 so lean, so woebegone, as hardly to be recognis- 
 able, even to the eye of friendship. Of all his 
 diverse-raging hairs not one to assert itself, but 
 all plastered close with an oily sleekness by a 
 slimy clinging mud, the thin ribs showing plainly, 
 and the hinder part of the poor wretch's barrel a 
 mere hand-grasp. His very tail, which had used 
 to look like an irregular much-worn bottle-brush, 
 was thin and sleek like a rat's, and he tucked it 
 away as if he were ashamed of it. His feet 
 were clotted with red earth, and he walked as if 
 his head were a burden to him, he hung it so 
 mournfully and carried it so low. 
 
 My young English acquaintance, who, like
 
 I SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY 63 
 
 myself, had been watching the procession, had 
 posted himself a little farther down the road, 
 with Scraper near at hand. Xear to him, em- 
 ploying all the ingratiatory insinuating arts she 
 knew, and so absorbed in Scraper that she forgot 
 even to direct the procession, was Lil. To her, 
 fawning and whining in such an excess of feeble 
 joy as can be rarely known to dogs or man, came 
 the half-starved, half-drowned creature. I was 
 already half-way to Schwartz's rescue, with imme- 
 diate milk, to be followed by soap and water, in 
 my mind, but I stopped to see how Lil would 
 receive the returned companion of old days. It 
 is scarcely probable that dogs believe in ghosts, 
 and yet it would have been easy to fancy that 
 she saw in him at first some purely supernatural 
 apparition, she recoiled with so obvious a sur- 
 prise and terror when she first beheld him. The 
 wretched, propitiatory, humbly-ecstatic Schwartz 
 advanced, but she showed her gleaming teeth, 
 and growled aversion. He stopped stock-still,
 
 64 SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY I 
 
 and whined a little, and Lil responded furiously. 
 I took the returned wanderer up in both hands, 
 and carried him into the hotel scullery, and got 
 milk for him. He lapped it with tears running 
 down his muddy nose ; and when I had had him 
 washed and tucked away into an old railway rug, 
 beside a stove in the little room, he lay there 
 winking and blinking, and licked at his own 
 tears with an expression altogether broken- 
 hearted. I should have liked to have known 
 something of the history of his subterranean 
 wanderings, but that was only to be left to con- 
 jecture. I bade him be of better cheer, and 
 went outside to wait for the return of the pro- 
 cession, and to smoke a cigar in the open air, 
 and an hour later found that Schwartz had again 
 disappeared. This time, however, he had merely 
 gone home, and though for a day or two he was 
 quite an invalid, he was soon about the streets 
 again, completely rehabilitated. 
 
 And now I come to the relation of the one
 
 I SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY 65 
 
 tragic fact which seemed to me to make this 
 simple history worth writing. I hope that 
 nobody will regard it as an invention, or will 
 suppose that I am trading upon their sympathies 
 on false pretences. 
 
 On the day of the young Englishman's de- 
 parture I accompanied him to the railway station. 
 Lil came down in attendance upon Scraper, and 
 barked fiercely at the departing train which bore 
 Mm away. Schwartz followed in humble pursuit 
 of Lil, who, so far as I could understand affairs, 
 had never forgiven him for intruding himself in so 
 unpresentable a guise, and claiming acquaintance 
 whilst she was engaged in conversation with a 
 swell like Scraper. From that hour she had 
 refused to hold the slightest communion with 
 him, showing her teeth and growling in the 
 cruellest way whenever he approached her. In 
 spite of this, Schwartz seemed to be persuaded 
 that, in the absence of his rival, he still stood 
 a chance, and day after day he followed her 
 
 VOL. I F
 
 66 SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY i 
 
 with the old fawning humbleness, and day after 
 day she received him with the same anger and 
 disdain. ; 
 
 On a certain Wednesday afternoon the air 
 was wonderfully mild and dry. It was early in 
 January, but the weather was so fine that I had 
 not even need of an overcoat, as I sat in the 
 sunshine smoking and reading. I had seen 
 Monsieur Dorn enter the opposite house, taking 
 Lil with him, and Schwartz had settled himself 
 on the doorstep, as usual, to await her exit. I 
 called him to me, and he crossed over, but soon 
 returned and resumed his place, and sat there 
 waiting still. After a considerable time the door 
 opened, and Monsieur Dorn and Lil emerged 
 together. I looked up at that moment, and saw 
 Lil make a savage dart at her too -persistent 
 worshipper. Monsieur Dorn beat them apart, 
 but Schwartz had attempted no resistance. He 
 was rather badly bitten, and when I picked him 
 up the tears were running fast down his nose,
 
 I SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY 67 
 
 and he was feebly licking at them, and whining 
 to himself in a way which indicated the extremest 
 weakness of spirit. I sat down with him, and 
 comforted the poor - hearted creature, and he 
 seemed grateful, for he licked my hand re- 
 peatedly, but he did not cease to whine and 
 weep. 
 
 By and by I heard, though I did not notice 
 it at the time, the warning whistle of the 
 approaching train. The station is little more 
 than a stone's throw from the hotel. Schwartz 
 made a leap, licked my face, jumped from the 
 bench, and ambled away. I never saw him 
 alive again, for, on the testimony of the signal- 
 man, he ran down to the railway line, stretched 
 himself upon one of the rails, and, in spite of a 
 stone the man threw at him when the train 
 had advanced dangerously near to him, he 
 held his place until the wheels passed over his 
 body. 
 
 His remains were buried in his master's
 
 68 SCHWARTZ : A HISTORY i 
 
 back garden. I know that he knew full well 
 what he was doing when he stretched himself 
 upon the rail, and I know that his feeble and 
 affectionate heart was broken before he did 
 it.
 
 II 
 
 YOUNG ME. BARTER'S REPENTANCE
 
 YOUXG ME. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 
 
 I 
 
 Mr. Bommaney was a British merchant of the 
 highest rectitude and the most spotless reputation. 
 He traded still under the name of Bommaney, 
 Wake, and Co., though Waite had been long since 
 dead, and the Company had gone out of existence 
 in Ms father's time. The old offices, cramped 
 and inconvenient, in which the firm had begun 
 life eighty years before, were still good enough for 
 Mr. Bommaney, and they had an air of solid 
 respectability which newer and flashier places 
 lacked. The building of which they formed a part 
 stood in Coalporter's Alley, opposite the Church 
 of St. Mildred, and the hum of the City's traffic
 
 72 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 scarcely sounded in that retired and quiet 
 locality. 
 
 Mr. Bommaney himself was a man of sixty, 
 hale and hearty, with a rosy face and white 
 whiskers. He was a broad-shouldered man, in- 
 clining to be portly, and he was currently ac- 
 cepted as a man of an indomitable will. There 
 was no particular reason for the popular belief in 
 his determination apart from the fact that it was 
 a favourite boast of his that nothing ever got him 
 down. On all occasions and in all companies he was 
 wont to declare that no conceivable misfortune 
 could really break a man of spirit. He confessed 
 to a pitying sympathy for mealy -willed people 
 (and everybody knew that Bommaney, in spite of 
 his own strength of mind, was one of the kindliest 
 creatures in the world) ; but, whenever he met a 
 man in trouble, he would clip him by the shoulder, 
 and would say, in his own hearty fashion, ' You 
 must look the thing in the face, my boy. Look it in 
 the face. I'd never let anything break me down.'
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 73 
 
 Since his reputation for fortitude was as solid 
 and as old-fashioned amongst the people who 
 knew him as his business character itself, it 
 would have come as something of a shock upon 
 any of his friends if he could but have been seen 
 by them, or any credible man amongst them, on 
 a certain afternoon in the April of 1880. He 
 had locked himself in his own room, and, sitting 
 there in a big chair before a business-like desk, 
 with a great number of docketed papers in pigeon- 
 holes, and a disordered mass of papers strewn 
 before him, the determined Mr. Bommaney, the 
 decided Mr. Bommaney, the Mr. Bommaney whom 
 no misfortune could subdue, was crying, very 
 feebly and quietly, and was mopping his rosy 
 cheeks, and blowing his nose in an utter and 
 unrestraining abandonment to trouble. 
 
 There was another fact which would have 
 come upon his friends with an equal shock of 
 surprise if they could but have had it brought 
 home to them. The man who sat unaffectedly
 
 74 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 crying in the big chair in helpless contemplation 
 of the scattered papers was a hopeless bankrupt, 
 and had ;seen himself sliding towards bankruptcy 
 for years. When men who knew him wanted busi- 
 ness advice, they went to him by preference, and 
 nobody came away empty. He knew the City 
 and its intricacies like a book. He knew who 
 was safe and who was shaky, as if by a kind of 
 instinct, and he knew where and when to invest, 
 and where and when not to invest, as few men 
 did. ' 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 to 
 his 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 score 
 of fairly well-to-do speculative people who had to 
 thank him, and him alone, 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 he had always acted like a green-
 
 ii YOUNG MR. BARTER S REPENTANCE / 5 
 
 horn. He talked loudly, he spent freely, he paid 
 his way, he expressed the soundest business 
 maxims, and was as shrewd in detail as he was 
 wise in generalities, and these things made a 
 natural reputation for him : whilst he traded for 
 years at the expense of his capital, and went 
 steadily and surely towards the bottomless gulf of 
 insolvency. Now he was on the very verge of it, 
 and to-morrow he would be in it. It lent a 
 feeble sting to his sufferings to know how sur- 
 prised people would be, and how completely men 
 would find him out. 
 
 He had not very profoundly involved other 
 people in his own ruin, but he had gone a little 
 farther than a man altogether brave, and honour- 
 able, and clear-sighted would have ventured, and 
 he knew that some would suffer with him. He 
 might have made arrangements to go a little 
 farther still if he had been courageous, clear- 
 sighted, and dishonest, and might have held his 
 head up for another matter too, perhaps. . But he
 
 76 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 had lacked the nerve for that, and had never con- 
 sciously been a rogue. He felt even now a pride 
 of honesty. He had been unfortunate, and 
 his creditors would have everything — every- 
 thing. 
 
 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 
 should he face Phil when he came home again ? 
 How should he send the news to him ? The lad 
 was away enjoying himself, travelling all round 
 the world with a wandering Baronet, who owned 
 a yacht and had an unappeasable taste for the 
 destruction of big game. He would have to sur- 
 render his fashionable and titled acquaintance 
 now, poor fellow, and begin the world with 
 a disgraced and broken frame to be a drag 
 and hindrance to him. The more Mr. 
 Bommaney thought of these things, the more 
 unrestrainedly he cried ; and the more he cried, 
 the less he felt able or inclined to control his tears.
 
 ii YOUNG ME. BAETEE S REPENTANCE , 1 
 
 He wept almost silently, only an occasional 
 sniff betraying his emotion to his ear. He had 
 always held his head so high, and had been so 
 believed in. It was very bitter. 
 
 Whilst he was in the midst of this childish 
 abandonment to his grief a set of knuckles softly 
 and hesitatingly tapped the door from without, 
 and directly afterwards a hand made a tentative 
 respectful sort of attempt upon the handle. 
 
 1 Who's there ? ' cried Mr. Bommaney, steady- 
 ing 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 a smaller room consulted 
 a little square looking-glass which hung upon the 
 wall above his washing-stand. His blue eyes 
 were very tearful and a little 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
 
 78 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 trembled, thinking that Mr. Hornett, his confi- 
 dential clerk, would know how he was breaking 
 down, and would speak of his want of courage 
 and self - command hereafter. The reflection 
 nerved him somewhat, and he sluiced his face 
 with water, making a little unnecessary noise of 
 splashing to tell the listener how he was engaged. 
 He polished his face with the towel, and, con- 
 sulting the mirror again, thought he looked a 
 little better. Then he re-entered his business 
 room, and turning the key in the lock opened the 
 door slightly, a mere inch or two. 
 
 ' Who is it ? ' 
 
 1 A Mr. Brown, sir,' said the smooth voice out- 
 side. The clerk insinuated a card through the 
 space between the door and door-jamb, and Mr. 
 Bommaney took it from his fingers without 
 revealing himself. He had some difficulty in 
 making out its inscription, for his eyes were 
 newly tearful, and, whilst he peered at it, a reflex 
 of his late emotions brought a sniffling sob again.
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER S REPENTANCE 79 
 
 He was freshly ashamed at this, and said 
 hastily, 
 
 'Five minutes' time. I will ring when I am 
 ready. Ask the gentleman to wait.' 
 
 Mr. James Hornett softly closed the door, and 
 stood on the landing with long lean fingers scrap- 
 ing 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 his 
 fingers rasped upon his hollow cheeks with a 
 faint sound. His nose and chin were long and 
 pointed, and his manner was meek and self- 
 effacing even when he was alone. There was a 
 tinge of wonder in his face, at war with an 
 habitual smile, in which his eyes had no part. 
 1 Something wrong ? ' he said, under his breath. 
 He went creeping softly down the stairs. ' Some- 
 thing wrong ? Mr. Bommaney in tears ? Mr. 
 Bommaney ! ' 
 
 Could anything have happened to Mr. Phil ?
 
 80 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 That was the only thing Mr. Hornett could think 
 of as being likely to affect his employer in that way. 
 Now ; Mr. Hornett had been in his present 
 employ for thirty years, man and boy, and he was 
 human. Therefore, when at the expiration of a 
 little more than five minutes' time Mr. Bom- 
 maney's bell rang, he himself ushered the visitor 
 upstairs, and in place of retiring to his own pew 
 below stairs, lingered in a desert little apartment 
 rarely used, and then stole out upon the landing 
 and listened. He was the more prompted to this 
 because the visitor, who had a bucolic hearty 
 aspect, and was very talkative, had told him 
 downstairs that Mr. Bommaney and himself were 
 old friends and schoolfellows, and had been in 
 each other's confidence for years. 
 
 'I am afraid, sir,' Mr. Hornett had said, 
 when the visitor first presented himself, 
 ' that Mr. Bommaney may not be able to 
 see you at present. He gave orders not to be 
 disturbed.'
 
 II YOUNG ME. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 81 
 
 1 Not see me ? ' said the visitor with a laugh. 
 1 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 that this visitor might be the 
 recipient of the intelligence, and Mr. Hornett 
 lingered to find if haply he might overhear. He 
 heard nothing that enlightened him as to the 
 reasons for his employer's disturbance, but heard 
 most that passed between the two. 
 
 Bommaney had succeeded in composing him- 
 self and in washing away the traces of his tears. 
 Then he had taken a stiffish dose of brandy and 
 water, and was something like his own man 
 again. He received his visitor cordially, and in 
 his anxiety not to seem low-spirited was a little 
 more boisterous than common. 
 
 ' I'm busy, you see,' he said, waving a hand at 
 the papers scattered on the desk, and keeping up 
 the farce of prosperous merchandise to the last, 
 
 VOL. I G
 
 82 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 ' but I can spare you a minute or two, old man. 
 What brings you up to town ? ' 
 
 'I've- come here to settle/ said the visitor. He 
 was a florid man with crisp black hair with a 
 hint of gray in it, and he was a countryman from 
 head to heel. He seemed a little disposed to 
 flaunt his bucolics upon the town, his hat, his 
 necktie, his boots and gaiters, were of so countri- 
 fied a fashion, and yet he looked somehow more 
 of a gentleman than Bommaney. 
 
 1 Yes,' he said, ' I've come to settle.' He 
 rubbed his hands and laughed here, not because 
 there was anything humorous and amusing in his 
 thoughts, but out of sheer health and jollity of 
 nature. Bommaney, still distrustful of his own 
 aspect, and afraid of being observed, sat opposite 
 to him with bent head and fidgeted with his 
 papers, blindly pretending to arrange them. 
 
 1 To settle/ he said absently. Then, rousing 
 himself with an effort, ' I thought you hated 
 London ? '
 
 ii YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 83 
 
 ' Ah, my boy/ said his visitor, ' when you're 
 in the shafts with a whip behind 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 perfect happiness and self-content- 
 ment, and had no eye for Bommaney's abstraction. 
 
 1 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/ he 
 added, with an air and voice suddenly serious 
 and confidential, ' the country's going to the devil. 
 Land's sinking in value every year. I've been 
 farming at a growing loss these six years, and 
 rents don't come in as they used to do. I got 
 my chance and I took it. Lord Bellamy wanted 
 to join the Mount Eoyal and the three estates. 
 My little bit o' land lay between 'em, and I sold 
 it to him. Sold it, too, begad, as well as I could 
 have done half a dozen years ago.'
 
 84 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 Then he laughed once more with great hearti- 
 ness, and unbuttoning his overcoat, groped in an 
 inner pocket. After a struggle, in the course of 
 which he grew very red in the face, he drew forth 
 a pocket-book of unusual dimensions, and slapped 
 it on the desk so vigorously that his companion 
 started. 
 
 '. I got a tip the other day,' he went on ; ' that 
 old bank at Mount Eoyal, Fellowes and Fellowes, 
 is going to crack up, my boy. There's something 
 very queer in the commercial atmosphere just 
 now, Bommaney. There are lots of old-fashioned 
 solid people breaking up.' 
 
 To Bommaney's uneasy fancy there was in his 
 visitor's voice an accent which sounded personal. 
 
 1 1 — I hope not,' he answered, somewhat 
 
 feebly, ' so much depends ' (he tried hard to 
 
 rally himself), ' so much depends upon a spirit of 
 commercial confidence.' 
 
 ' Exactly,' cried the visitor, laying hands upon 
 the pocket-book and opening it. f I went to the
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 85 
 
 bank and saw young Fellowes myself. " Look 
 here, Fellowes," I told him, " I want my daughter's 
 money." He stuck to it, sir ; like a dog holding 
 on to a bone. He growled about it, and he 
 whined about it, said it wasn't fair to withdraw 
 the money on short notice. Said I couldn't do 
 better with it anywhere, and at last I told him, 
 " Look here, Fellowes, I shall begin to think by 
 and by there's something wrong." He went as 
 red as a turkey-cock, begad, and drew a note 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 flick- 
 ing the edges of the notes with the tips of his 
 great broad fingers. Bommaney heard the crisp 
 music, and looked up with a momentary glance 
 of hunger in his eyes. 
 
 'That's Patty's little private handful,' the 
 visitor continued, opening the packet of notes, 
 and smoothing it upon his knee. ' Eighty notes
 
 86 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 of a hundred. Pretty little handful, isn't it ? 
 They don't look/ he added, with his head reflect- 
 ively 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 inaudible something died drily 
 in his throat. When his companion began to 
 speak again, the bankrupt merchant wondered 
 that he made no comment on his ghastly face — 
 he knew his face was ghastly — or his shaking 
 hands. There was an intuition in his mind so 
 strong and clear that he trembled at its pro- 
 phecy. 
 
 ' Patty,' said the visitor, ' will have everything 
 in time, and a pretty good handful, too. But 
 she's bent on being independent, and she wants 
 to have her own money in her own hands. She 
 pretends it's all because she wants to pay her 
 milliner's bills, and that kind of thing, herself; 
 but I know better. The fact is ' — he lowered
 
 n YOUNG MR. BARTER S REPENTANCE 87 
 
 his voice and chuckled — ' the fact is, she doesn't 
 want me to know how much she spends in char- 
 ity. You look here, Bornnianey' — the merchant's 
 heart seemed to stand still, and then to beat so 
 wild an alarum that he wondered the other did 
 not hear it. The intuition multiplied in strength. 
 He heard beforehand the spoken words, the very 
 tones which marked them. ' You're a safe man, 
 you're a smart man. I suppose there isn't any- 
 body in London who can lay out money to more 
 advantage than you can. I know it's a great 
 favour to ask, but I think you'll do it for Patty's 
 sake and mine, if I do ask you. Take this, and 
 invest it for her. "Will you, now ? ' 
 
 He stood up with the bundle of notes out- 
 stretched in his hand. The merchant rose and 
 accepted it, and looked him, with a sudden curi- 
 ous calm and steadiness, straight in the face.
 
 II 
 
 Mr. Bommaney was alone again, and if it had not 
 been for the actual presence of the bundle of 
 bank-notes upon the table, he could well have 
 thought that the whole episode had been no more 
 than a dreadful and disturbing dream. It was 
 very hard, he thought complainingly, that a man 
 should come and put so horrible a temptation in 
 his way. He would not yield to it — of course 
 he would not yield to it. He had been an honest 
 and honourable man all his life long, and had 
 never so much as felt a monetary temptation 
 until now. It was humiliating to feel it now — it 
 was horrible to have his fingers itching for an- 
 other man's money, and his heart coveting it, and 
 his brain, in spite of himself, devising countless
 
 ii YOUNG MB. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 89 
 
 means of use for it. It was quite unbearable to 
 know that the money might tide him over his 
 troubles and land him in prosperity again, if he 
 could only dare to use it, and risk engulfing it 
 with the lost wreckage of his own fortunes. 
 
 But no, no, no. He had never meant to use 
 it. His only reason for accepting it had been 
 that he had not found the courage to declare his 
 true position to his old friend and school com- 
 panion. Perhaps, he told himself (trying to 
 silence and cajole that inward monitor and accuser 
 who would not be silenced or cajoled), perhaps 
 if Brown had been less confident and truthful — 
 if he had had less faith in his old companion's 
 powers as a man of business — it would have 
 come easier to tell the truth. And how futile a 
 thing it was to stave off discovery for a single day ! 
 How doubly ashamed he would have to feel after 
 that poor pretenceof responsible solidity ! If he had 
 only been disposed to be tempted at all — here surely 
 was an added reason for yielding to temptation.
 
 90 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 Obviously the first, and, indeed, the only thing 
 to be done, was to bank this money in Brown's 
 name, and so have done with it ; and yet any 
 feeling of haste in that respect would seem to 
 imply a fear of temptation, which he was, of 
 course, quite resolute not to feel. He was not 
 going any more to run away from his own sus- 
 picion of himself than he 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 his mind 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. James Hornett had slid noise- 
 lessly downstairs, his mind inflated by pride. 
 He was not proud of having played the eaves- 
 dropper, for even in Mr. Hornett's economy of 
 things, that was an act to be proud of; but he 
 was very proud, indeed, to be associated with a 
 gentleman so magnificently respected as Mr. Bom- 
 maney. There were not so very many people, he
 
 ii YOUNG MB. BAETEB'S RKPENTAHCE 91 
 
 told himself, even in the City of London, which 
 was full of wealth and probity, into whose hands 
 so large a sum would be placed with so little a 
 sense of the necessity of precaution. He felt as 
 if he himself had been treated in this majestic 
 manner, and the feeling warmed his heart. He 
 bowed Mr. Brown from the office door with an 
 empressement which he feared a moment later 
 might almost have betrayed him, and he went 
 about his duties for the rest of the day in a mood 
 of unusual contentment. The earlier memory of 
 his employer's disturbance crossed him sometimes, 
 and always excited his curiosity ; but the later 
 feeling dominated him. He was delighted by his 
 association with a concern so eminently respect- 
 able as that of Bommaney, \Vaite, and Co. 
 
 Meanwhile Mr. Hornett's employer, with that 
 dreadful rooted secret in his mind, which he did 
 not dare to look at, sat alone, looking with star- 
 ing eyes before him, and drumming in a regular 
 tune upon the topmost note of the terrible little
 
 92 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 pile. He had locked the notes away before 
 Brown's departure, but they had seemed to draw 
 him to the safe with almost a physical compul- 
 sion, and he had brought them out again to look 
 at them, to handle them, to count them, to resolve 
 in his own mind that he did not hanker after 
 them, and was honourable to the core. It was 
 so new a thing to be tempted, that at times his 
 own self-deception was made easy to him. It 
 did not occur to him to reflect that the need and 
 the means had never so presented themselves to- 
 gether until now, or that his lifelong honour had 
 depended upon their absence. 
 
 When he had sat in silence for a while he 
 awoke to the fact that the interview had been 
 nothing but a succession of shocks to him, and 
 that he was bodily exhausted. He rose, and, 
 walking feebly to the inner room, applied himself 
 anew to the brandy bottle he kept there. He 
 had gone much too often to that deceptive solace 
 lately, and he knew it*; but each successive visit
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 93 
 
 carried its own excuses with it, and it had never 
 in any individual instance been worth while to 
 resist a habit which it was always easy to con- 
 demn in the main. 
 
 The brandy enlightened him and opened new 
 sluices of emotion. Perhaps for the moment he 
 was a better man because of it. He seemed to 
 wake to a more determined sense of the enormity 
 of the temptation which lay before him. He 
 thought of his own son, and a shadow took him 
 from head to foot as, in a brandified nervous 
 vision, he beheld some shadowy supposititious 
 creature in the act of telling the tale to Phil. 
 The vice of 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 clearer 
 than the natural, and Philip drunk a better man, 
 and a more righteous and honourable, than Philip 
 sober. 
 
 At bottom, Philip Bomrnaney knew himself 
 too well to be at all sure that this phase of feel-
 
 94 YOUNG MR. BARTERS REPENTANCE II 
 
 ing would endure with him ; and in a half-con- 
 scious dread of the return of that baser self, 
 whose first appearance in his history had so 
 affrighted him, he hurriedly attired himself for 
 out-of-doors, crammed the bundle of notes into an 
 inner pocket of his overcoat, and, after a final 
 appeal to the decanter, left his room with a some- 
 what hysteric sense of courage and self-approval. 
 He had been tempted — he was ready to recognise 
 that the temptation was over, that he had 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 were 
 some tears in his eyes compounded of brandy and 
 nerves and affections and remorses as he hurried 
 into the street. Phil should never be ashamed of 
 his father. Old Brown, who had trusted him 
 like a brother, should never learn to shun and 
 hate him. He had to go under — the thing was 
 inevitable, unescapable, but he would at least go 
 under like a man. His heart beat to the tune of
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 95 
 
 the ' Conquering Hero,' where it might have beat 
 to the ' Rogue's March/ but for that friendly 
 nip of brandy and the all -covering mercies of 
 Heaven. 
 
 Quickly as his resolution had been taken, he 
 had fully arranged for the details of the task 
 which lay before him. With the notes he had 
 thrust into his pocket a little handful of business 
 papers involving a knotty and delicate point of 
 business, and he intended that the discussion of 
 the point they raised should act as the prelude to 
 the disclosure and the restitution he desired to 
 make. He could not, even in his new-found 
 heroism, and with whatever hysteric hardihood he 
 was prepared to meet the stroke of fate, he could 
 not as yet encounter Brown, and lay bare before 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 into the bargain, a 
 solicitor, keen as a needle and kindly as sunshine, 
 one Barter, whose business chambers were in
 
 96 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 Gable Inn, and who was of all men 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 lay tranquil, 
 the afternoon shadows already settling deeper on 
 the little quadrangle than on the broad and roar- 
 ing thoroughfare without. There was no light in 
 the windows of the rooms in which Messrs. Fellow- 
 ship, Freemantle, and Barter had done business 
 and received their clients fifty years ago, and in 
 which the sole surviving member of the firm still 
 maintained its old - established reputation for 
 honour and astuteness. 
 
 Bommaney was chilled by the silence and 
 darkness of the rooms, and he shivered to see 
 the temptation he had conquered looming again 
 before him. He knocked loudly with a trembling 
 hand, and the noise of iron on iron went rolling and 
 echoing up the staircase and came back in a hollow, 
 lonely, sounding murmur from the rooms within. 
 His heart sank, and a horrible fear of himself
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 97 
 
 got hold of him. He had actually conquered, 
 and here was the fight to be fought over again 
 with almost a certainty of defeat at the end of it. 
 Indeed, the defeat in that bare moment of time 
 had grown so certain, that he was conscious of a 
 distinct state of disappointment when a sudden 
 footstep within the rooms answered ' his noisy 
 summons. 
 
 The door opened, and a young man stood 
 before him, peering at him with half-closed un- 
 certain eyes through the dark. He was a young 
 man of the fleshly school, something too stout for 
 his years, very pallid, and more than commonly 
 personable, with a fine broad forehead, fine frank 
 eyes, and features modelled with an engaging 
 regularity. "When he recognised his visitor his 
 pale and handsome face glittered with a sudden 
 smile of welcome, teeth and eyes gleaming quite 
 brightly, and the whole face lighting up in the 
 pleasantest and friendliest fashion conceivable. 
 
 This agreeable expression faded into one of 
 VOL. I H
 
 98 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 almost mechanical dolor, and the personable 
 young man shook hands with Mr. Bommaney 
 sadly, and sighed as if he suddenly recalled an 
 idea that sighing was a duty. 
 
 ' Come in, Mr. Bommaney,' he said. ' Come 
 in, sir. I have sent home all the clerks, and 
 was just about to lock up for the night. To 
 what do I owe the pleasure of this visit ? Let 
 me light the gas.' 
 
 Bommaney, the door being closed behind him, 
 stumbled along the darkened passage after the 
 more assured and accustomed steps of young Mr. 
 Barter, and the inner office being gained, and the 
 gas being lighted, allowed himself to be motioned 
 to a chair. What with having been too much 
 agitated by the contemplation of his troubles to 
 be able to eat at all that day, and what with the 
 fight he had had with his temptations, and the 
 too frequent applications he had made to the 
 brandy, it happened that for the moment he was 
 by no means certain of his purpose. He sat for
 
 ir YOUNG ME. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 99 
 
 a little while wondering rather hazily what had 
 brought him there. As often happens with 
 absent-minded people, his hands remembered 
 what had been required of them before his brain 
 began to act again, and by and by the fact that 
 he had unbuttoned his overcoat, and had taken a 
 bundle of papers from his pocket, recalled him to 
 his purpose. 
 
 1 1 wanted,' he said, emerging from his haze, 
 and holding the bundle of papers nervously in 
 both hands, ' I wanted to see your father upon 
 very special and urgent business.' 
 
 1 My father ? ' the young man answered, with 
 a look and accent of pained surprise. ' Do you 
 mean to say, sir, that you haven't heard the 
 news ? ' 
 
 1 The news ? ' cried Bommaney, feeling blindly 
 as if some new misfortune threatened him. 
 ' What news ? ' 
 
 ' My father, sir,' said young Mr. Barter, with 
 a certain blending of professional airs, something
 
 100 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 of a legal impress mingled with something of the 
 manner of a medical man conveying mournful 
 intelligence to the relatives of a patient, 'my 
 father, sir, was struck down by an omnibus in 
 the street this morning. He is terribly injured, 
 and not expected to recover.' 
 
 1 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 man 
 upon a raft, who sees the bindings of the frail 
 thing break apart. Shipwrecked already, and 
 now the last hope gone ! He hardly knew, if he 
 could have asked himself the question clearly, 
 why he so particularly desired to see Barter. He 
 hardly knew what Barter could have done for 
 him, except to listen to his troubles and take 
 charge of the eight thousand pounds which 
 tempted him, and yet the disappointment seemed 
 as heavy and as hard to bear as anything he had 
 hitherto endured. He sat staring forlornly before 
 him, with tears in his eyes, and young Mr. Bar-
 
 ii YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 101 
 
 ter, in much astonishment at his susceptibility 
 and tenderness, sat watching him. Something 
 slid from Bommaney's hands with a rustle, and 
 dropped upon the floor. Young Mr. Barter 
 made a mere hint or beginning of a movement, 
 as if he would have picked it up for him. 
 Bommaney made no movement at all, but stared 
 before him with his blue-gray eyes filling more 
 and more with tears, until two or three brimmed 
 over and trickled down his cheeks. He said, 
 ' God bless my soul ! ' once more, mechanically, 
 and restored what remained of his bundle of 
 papers to his pocket. Young Mr. Barter looked 
 with one swift and vivid glance from the fallen 
 bundle to his guest's face, then back again. 
 Bommaney rose from his seat, buttoned his over- 
 coat with awkward and lingering fingers, and put 
 on his hat. He was evidently unconscious of 
 his own tears, and made no attempt to disguise 
 them, or to wipe them away. He said, ' God 
 bless my soul ! ' a third time, and then, shaking
 
 102 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 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 backward glance at 
 the papers as he left the room, and was curiously 
 voluble in his dismissal of his visitor. Anything 
 he could do — Mr. Bommaney might rest per- 
 fectly assured — the clerks would be back to- 
 morrow in any case — he would advise Mr. Bom- 
 maney of his father's condition by that night's 
 post — he himself was naturally most profoundly 
 anxious. In this wise he talked Bommaney 
 from the chambers, and when once he had closed 
 the door behind him, went back along the dark 
 little corridor with an unnecessarily catlike tread. 
 He could hardly have been other than certain 
 that he was alone, yet when he reached the inner 
 room he looked about him with a keen quick 
 darting suspicion, and for half a minute ignored 
 the fallen papers on the floor. 
 
 ' Dear me ! ' he said, when at length he suf-
 
 ii YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 103 
 
 fered his eves to rest upon them. ' What can 
 that be ? How did that come here ? ' 
 
 He stooped, picked up the papers, laid them 
 upon his desk, and smoothed them out, making a 
 fold lengthways to counteract the creases into 
 which they had already fallen. He saw a crisp 
 clean Bank of England note for a hundred pounds, 
 and, lifting it, found another. Then he lifted 
 half the bundle, and, finding a note of the same 
 value, gave an inward gasp, and expelled his 
 breath slowly after it. Then he looked at the 
 last note of all, and sat down with the whole 
 bundle in his hands. His pale and fleshy 
 features had taken an unusual colour, and his 
 breathing was a good deal disturbed. A watcher 
 might have guessed that he was profoundly 
 agitated from the swift unintermittent rustle the 
 paper made in his hands. He seemed to sit as 
 steady as a rock, and yet the crisp paper rustled 
 noisily. 
 
 Mr. Brown's bank-notes had been a fruitful
 
 104 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE II 
 
 source of emotion that day already, and, in Bom- 
 maney's mind at least, had raised very dreadful 
 doubts and perplexities. There were doubts and 
 perplexities in the mind of young Mr. Barter, but 
 they were altogether of another order. Young 
 Mr. Barter was perfectly aware that he was being 
 tempted, and felt that, in its way, the temptation 
 was a kind of godsend. He even said as much 
 in a low murmur to himself. His perplexities 
 related to other things than the fear of any fall 
 from honour. Bommaney had evidently been 
 very queer. Bommaney had. been horribly cut 
 up about something, even before he heard the 
 news the young solicitor had to give him. But 
 was he so disturbed as to be likely to forget 
 where he had last secured so considerable a sum 
 of money ? This mental inquiry naturally set 
 young Mr. Barter to work to discover how con- 
 siderable the sum of money actually was. He 
 laid the notes upon the table, and tried to wet 
 his thumb upon his lips. There was no moisture
 
 ii YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 105 
 
 there, and his mouth was as dry as touchwood. 
 He drank a little water, and then began to count 
 the notes. He made them eighty-one at first ; 
 and then, recounting, made them seventy -nine. 
 Counting them a third time, he made them 
 eighty. 
 
 1 Damn it all ! ' said young Mr. Barter, ' can't 
 I count ? I suppose the old buffer will come 
 back for them.' He tried a fourth time, and 
 confirmed his third counting. ' They'll get 
 stopped at the Bank,' he said. ' They'll be no 
 use to anybody.' He sat for a while thinking, 
 with his eyes half-closed, drumming out a tune 
 upon the table "with the tips of his fat white 
 fingers, then he folded the notes with great pre- 
 cision and delicacy, put them into his pocket, 
 found his hat, overcoat, and walking-stick, and 
 made ready for the streets. In the quiet of these 
 legal chambers many chance noises from without 
 had from time to time been clearly audible. He 
 heard now a hurrying step upon the pavement of
 
 106 YOUNG ME. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 the quadrangle, and, with a palpitation at the 
 heart, he moved swiftly to put out the light, and 
 listened.^ The step stumbled at the entrance 
 to the staircase, at the foot of which the outer 
 door stood closed. Young Mr. Barter's heart 
 beat, if possible, faster than before ; and the veins 
 in his head so throbbed, that only the confining 
 rim of his hat seemed to keep his head itself 
 from bursting. There came an eager summons 
 at the door, an imperative rapping with the head 
 of a stout walking-stick. He set his teeth, and, 
 drawing back his lips with a horrible smile in 
 the dark, breathed noiselessly. The rapping 
 grew more and more imperative and urgent, and 
 then came a preternatural silence, with an under- 
 current of distant sound in it, and the sudden 
 blare of a cornet in the street, which sounded to 
 his nerves like the trumpet ois the herald of the 
 day of judgment. He heard the hurrying feet 
 plunge down the steps again, and cross the 
 quadrangle, and listened until their sound merged
 
 ii YOUNG ME. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 107 
 
 into the dull noises of the London night. He 
 stood in the dark after this for what seemed a 
 long time, learning that his features twitched, and 
 teaching himself to control them. Then he left 
 his chambers with great secrecy, and broke into a 
 cold sweat to think, as he stood half through the 
 doorway, how narrowly he had escaped from 
 slamming the door behind hiim This was an act 
 which might have been suicidal in its stupidity ; 
 for to give any sign of his presence there after 
 that thundering summons at the door would have 
 been to betray himself beyond redemption. He 
 inserted his latch-key noiselessly, and, crouching 
 to escape imagined observers, drew the door gently 
 after him, and turned the key slowly in the lock. 
 As he did this he heard a footstep and a cough 
 together close at hand, and, turning with a start, 
 beheld a pale and slender man of brief stature, 
 who scraped his lantern jaws with apologetic 
 thumb and finger, and looking at him with a 
 startled meekness, as if he would fain propitiate
 
 108 young mr. barter's repentance h 
 
 anger for a possible intrusion, sidled to the foot 
 of the stairs, mounted the stairway with a back- 
 ward glance 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, bearing Mr. Bommaney's eight thousand 
 pounds with him. When he had walked for a 
 while he hailed a cab, and was driven home. He 
 had, or prided himself on having, an exceptional 
 eye for horseflesh, but it was not his faculty in 
 this direction which had led him to choose a cab 
 horsed by a brute of unusual symmetry and 
 swiftness. This was an accident, but, like other 
 accidents in this perplexed world, it served its 
 purpose. It landed him at the paternal door in 
 Harley Street almost at the instant at which 
 Bommaney arrived there in pursuit of him. 
 
 Now, although young Mr. Barter had not 
 calculated on meeting Bommaney so soon, and
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 109 
 
 although the meeting was naturally something of 
 a shock to him, he had already schooled himself 
 for interview and inquiry. He went a little 
 paler than common as he grasped his father's old 
 friend by the hand for the third time that even- 
 ing, and trembled ever so little as he spoke. 
 
 1 1 half expected to find you here/ he said. 
 •' I could see how moved you were by the news 
 of my father's illness.' The door stood open, and 
 the old-fashioned man-servant within had been in 
 the act of closing it upon Bommaney's retreating- 
 figure when cab number two had driven up, and 
 the young master of the house had alighted from it. 
 1 Is the news worse or better ? ' He laid both hands 
 upon Bommaney's arms as he put this question. 
 
 The elderly servitor, who had never had 
 reason given to him to believe that young Air. 
 Barter was above the reasonable attached to his 
 father, was a little surprised to see the young 
 man so moved. He drew the door gently after 
 him, and came out upon the steps.
 
 110 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 ' I'm afraid, Mr. John/ he murmured sympa- 
 thetically, 'that it's practically all over, sir. The 
 poor gentleman's quite unconscious, and the 
 doctor don't expect him to last till morning.' 
 
 Young Mr. Barter's mind was active, and 
 accustomed to rapid movement. He knew at 
 once that the old servant read the signs of dis- 
 turbance in his face and manner, and how far he 
 misread them. So, to insure the misreading, he 
 took out his handkerchief, and groaned at this 
 melancholy intelligence. 
 
 ' I ,' began Bommaney, stammering and 
 
 speaking a little thickly, ' I didn't come to ask 
 about your father.' Young Barter's heart at this, 
 though he was perfectly prepared for it, began to 
 beat like a sledge-hammer. ' I've had a dreadful 
 loss. I have called nowhere but at your office 
 since I left my own, and I have lost eight 
 thousand pounds. I am convinced that I must 
 have left it there.' 
 
 1 I can't think so, Mr. Bommaney,' said Barter,
 
 II YOUNG ME. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 111 
 
 with a face of innocence. ' We can go back 
 together, if you like, and look for it.' Bornmanev- 
 driver lingered for him ; the other cabman was 
 already jingling leisurely down the street. 
 
 1 Johnson/ said young Barter, addressing the 
 domestic, ' you hear what Mr. Bommaney says. 
 This is a matter of the most urgent importance, 
 and must be looked into at once. Tell my 
 mother that I have been home, and that I have 
 been called suddenly back on urgent business.' 
 Bommaney stood in a kind of stupid trance, and 
 the young man, taking him by the arm, 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 about such a matter.' 
 
 They rustled together through the straw which 
 had been laid down upon the roadway, and had 
 been scattered by the feet of passers-by upon the 
 pavement, and, mounting the cab, drove in a 
 ghastly silence for a score of yards, and then,
 
 112 YOUNG ME. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 with a clatter which made conversation difficult, 
 Bommaney, rousing himself at intervals, shouted 
 his certainty that the notes would prove to have 
 been left at Barter's chambers. Barter, grow- 
 ing curiously inured to the circumstances of the 
 case, shouted back that he dared to say they 
 would be ; that it was very likely ; that he 
 really did not see where else Mr. Bommaney 
 could possibly have left them, furtively pressing 
 the notes against his breast meanwhile, and 
 once, at a quiet interval, when Bommaney had 
 sunk into his former stupor, venturing to steal 
 a hand to the pocket in which the stolen money 
 lay, caressing the edges of the notes with the 
 tips of his fingers. 
 
 ' I'm sure,' said Bommaney, as the cab pulled 
 up at the gate of the quadrangle, ' that we shall 
 find them here.' He spoke with a tremulous 
 uncertainty, and so obviously appealed for a 
 confirmation of his hope, that Barter felt con- 
 strained to answer,
 
 ii YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 113 
 
 ' Oh, we are bound to find them/ 
 
 The striking of a wax vesta at the door of 
 the chambers, the shaky hunt for the key, the 
 well-known obstinacy of the lock, the opening of 
 the door, the fevered working of Bommaney's 
 finders, and the flushed eagerness of his face, 
 were all memorable to young Barter for many 
 and many a day. They entered together the 
 room in which their interview had taken place ; 
 and Barter, nursing the remnant of the flaming 
 vesta, lit the gas with it, and then, dropping it 
 on the floor, set his foot upon it, and looked at 
 his companion. 
 
 ' Where do you think you left the notes, 
 sir ? ' he asked. ■ Have you any idea ? I think 
 you took out some papers here. You wanted 
 to consult my father about them, I fancy, 
 and, if I remember, you returned them to your 
 pocket/ 
 
 Bommaney stood looking about him on the 
 floor, trailing the point of his walking-cane pur- 
 
 vol. i i
 
 114 YOUNG MR. BARTERS REPENTANCE n 
 
 poselessly hither and thither ; and it was at this 
 moment, 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 the knob of his walk- 
 ing-cane, and shaking in appeal before the un- 
 suspected thief — ' did you lock any papers away 
 before you left ? ' 
 
 As a matter of fact, young Barter had not 
 had any papers to lock away that evening after 
 Bommaney's departure ; but he thought the trick 
 worth playing, and, producing his keys, again 
 opened the heavy iron safe which stood against 
 the wall. 
 
 ' Yes,' he said, with an air of hopeful alacrity. 
 ' By Jove, I did ! ' He stood aside, with an 
 outstretched hand, and motioned Bommaney to 
 examine the contents of the safe. There was a 
 parchment there, there were half a dozen bundles
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 115 
 
 of documents tied in pink tape and docketed ; but 
 there were no bank-notes. 
 
 1 You know/ said Bommaney, with a fretful 
 wail, ' I must have left them here ; I couldn't 
 have left them anywhere else. I put it to you 
 —could I ? ' 
 
 Barter looked at him mournfully, with raised 
 eyebrows. There was just a hint of expostulation 
 in his raised eyebrows, and in the expression of 
 his voice. 
 
 1 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 voice and wept, ' I've 
 been an honest man, by God ! all my life long ; 
 and now I'm not merely ruined, but I shall be 
 taken for a thief.' He cried bitterly after this 
 outburst, with his head between his hands. His 
 hat fell off, and his walking-stick tumbled noisily 
 to the floor. Mr. Barter picked them up, and,
 
 116 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE II 
 
 having set them on the table, looked at the 
 shaking shoulders, and listened to the ruined 
 man's sobs and wailings. It was a pity — of 
 course it was a pity — but young Mr. Barter 
 really did not see how it was in his power to 
 help it.
 
 Ill 
 
 Ox a chill spring evening the sunset over London 
 gave a brief radiance of colour to the dull gray 
 roof and smoke - stained chimneys of many 
 thoroughfares. Shadows thickened in the eastern 
 skies as if fold after fold of finest crape were 
 drawn over the field of watery and opalescent 
 light the fallen sun had left behind it. In one 
 great thoroughfare running east and west the 
 sky-line of the houses stood distinct, and bathed 
 in light of many colours ; whilst down below 
 there was a wall of shadow. Two parallel walls 
 of shadow rose from a shadowy level, and the 
 dusk had a thousand indistinguishable voices. 
 
 The shadowy lines became accented by twin 
 rows of flickering fire, the rear jets seen with a
 
 118 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE II 
 
 blurred halo of mist round each of them, the halo 
 crawling feebly within itself, tormented by a 
 feeble wind. The long vista of pavement be- 
 came chequered like a chessboard, with patches 
 of light from shop windows. Gable Inn, staring 
 at the growing darkness with a single fiery eye, 
 looked like a Eip Van Winkle. It had been old 
 when Chaucer and the knights and ladies of 
 whom he sang were young ; and its hoary 
 stunted angles and squat chimney cowls had the 
 grave and impassive aspect proper to great age. 
 It has stood there now for over seven hundred 
 years hoarding a growing store of secrets. It is 
 roughly picturesque in every detail, and its every 
 chamber is a triumph of narrowness, obscurity, 
 and inconvenience. 
 
 In the quadrangle the shadows climbed the 
 sturdy walls as if they were an exhalation from 
 the paving-stones. The dim staircase sent down 
 all manner of muffled and echoing voices. Foot- 
 steps sounded, and the clang of doors, and the
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 119 
 
 shriek of unwilling keys in rusty locks, and 
 the hurrying traffic of the street without, 
 softened by the moist atmosphere, was like 
 the fading echo of following feet upon the 
 stairs. 
 
 Lights sprang up in the basement windows, 
 telling of pro-tractive legal labours. Lights 
 twinkled in the garrets, telling of lonely study 
 or noisy conviviality in the coming hours of 
 darkness. At length one side of the quadrangle 
 viewed by a solitary watcher from a third- floor 
 window of the opposing side, winked with a 
 hundred windows through the wet air and 
 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 was eight-and- 
 twenty years of age or thereabouts, a broad- 
 shouldered, deep - chested, manly -looking fellow, 
 with curling brown hair, and a face expressive of 
 pugnacity, good -humour, and many capacities.
 
 120 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 He was a little weary now, after a long day 
 of satisfactory work. He watched the mounting 
 shadows, ^and listened to the weird gamut of the 
 wind among the telegraph lines, until the outer 
 voices made his own dull room seem homely. 
 One ruddy tongue of flame from the expiring fire 
 in the grate played on the narrow walls and low 
 ceiling, and woke twinkling reflections in the 
 spare and battered furniture. A man's dwelling- 
 place is always an index to his character when 
 its arrangement depends upon himself; and signs 
 of Philip Bommaney's nature and pursuits were 
 visible in plenty here. There were symmetrical 
 rows of books on the shelves flanking the fire- 
 place. An orderly stack of newspapers occupied 
 one corner 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 the table in the midst of a great litter of 
 papers. The barrels of a huge elephant gun 
 flashed dimly from the wall as the firelight
 
 121 
 
 played upon them, and two or three lighter 
 weapons were ranged together lower down. 
 
 He turned from the window and lit the lamp, 
 and, wheeling round, held up the light to a photo- 
 graph, and studied it with a pleased face. It was 
 the portrait of a pretty girl, very sweetly grave, 
 and looking as if it could be very sweetly viva- 
 cious. When he had looked at it for a longish 
 time he nodded and smiled, as if the pictured 
 lips had actually spoken to him. There was a 
 tumbler standing beside the photograph with a 
 bunch of hothouse flowers in it, the one bright 
 spot of colour in the dingy chamber. He took 
 this in his disengaged hand, and nodding and 
 smiling anew at the pretty girl's portrait, he 
 turned about again, and walked into a bedroom 
 beyond a narrow and inconvenient little window. 
 The strident voice of the clock over the entrance 
 of the old Hall, answered or anticipated from 
 multitudinous spires in the City far and near, 
 sounded as Philip entered his bedroom. He
 
 122 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 stood and listened, counting six jarring strokes. 
 The bedroom was a microscopic apartment, with 
 as many: corners in it as any room of its size in 
 London, and the bed itself was a perfect triumph 
 of littleness, so tucked under the sloping roof, and 
 so surrounded by projecting corners, as to make 
 the entry to it or the exit from it a gymnastic 
 performance of considerable merit. The room 
 was not over-light at the best of times, the fourth 
 part of the space of one small window in the 
 sloping wall was filled by its own heavy frame- 
 work, and for half its height it was shielded by a 
 parapet, which had at least its uses in hiding the 
 occupant of the room from the too-curious obser- 
 vation of those who dwelt in the upper stories of 
 the houses opposite. These houses opposite, com- 
 pared with Gable Inn, are of a mushroom modern- 
 ness, and yet are old enough (having begun with 
 a debauched and sickly constitution) to have 
 fallen into an almost complete decrepitude. Their 
 stately neighbour seems to be less grimy with the
 
 ii YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 123 
 
 London smoke than they are, has always been 
 less susceptible to outside evil influences, even of 
 that unescapable sort, and drives them to an 
 added shabbiness of senility by contrast with its 
 own hale old age. 
 
 The bedroom window was already open for 
 the admission of such fresh air as, disguised in 
 London blacks, the exhalations of moist spring 
 pavements, and the reeking odours of the cuisine 
 of Fleeter's Eents, might choose to wander thither. 
 Philip, with the lamp in one hand and the 
 tumbler of flowers in the other, put out his head 
 and looked into the squalid depths below him, 
 and having gazed there a while absently and with 
 no object, drew back with a vague touch of pity 
 upon him for the people who dwelt in so much 
 squalor so near to healthy effort and reasonable 
 competence. He could hardly have told as much, 
 perhaps, but one pallid countenance, shining very 
 dimly at an open window, was very much answer- 
 able for that vague touch of pity. The. face in
 
 1 24 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 the darkness started away from the window as 
 he looked at it, as if his own robust health and 
 the light that dwelt about him startled its 
 pinched shabbiness into solitude. He set the 
 tumbler of flowers upon the window-ledge, and 
 closing the window, made his toilet and returned 
 to the sitting-room. Then, having banked up 
 the fire, and set the matches in such a position 
 that he could easily find them, he blew out the 
 lamp, left his chambers, and ran down the tor- 
 tuous stairs. As he turned the last corner a door 
 clanged noisily, and the next thing of which he 
 was conscious was that he was struggling in the 
 embrace of a stranger whom he 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. ' Bather heavily. It was lucky you had 
 something soft to fall on.' 
 
 Philip began to make apologies. The
 
 ii YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 125 
 
 stranger, breathless still, but jovially polite, 
 begged him not to mention it. He was a tallish 
 young man, broad set, and a little too fleshy for 
 his years. He had a clean-shaven face, healthily 
 pallid, the whitest of teeth, and a most frank, 
 engaging, and contagious smile. 
 
 'Pray don't say anything more about it,' he 
 said in answer to Philip's reiterated apologies. 
 ' You are not hurt, I hope ? ' 
 
 1 No, thanks ; but I'm afraid you are.' 
 
 I Xot at all. It was sharp for a minute ; but 
 I am all right now. The stairs are very incon- 
 venient, especially to strangers.' 
 
 I I haven't even that excuse for my clumsi- 
 ness,' said Philip ; ' for I am living here.' 
 
 ' Indeed ; then we are neighbours, and should 
 know each other. Eather an informal kind of 
 introduction, eh ? ' The stranger said this with a 
 mellow laugh and a flash of his white teeth. He 
 opened his overcoat as he spoke, and produced a 
 card-case, Philip catching the gleam of a gold-
 
 126 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 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 the like- 
 ness of an ancient tar-barrel, bore an inscription, 
 dim with long years — 'Fellowship, Freemantle, 
 and Barter' — and the names were repeated on 
 the door-post at the entrance. 
 
 'I have no card,' said Philip, accepting the 
 stranger's. ' My name is Bommaney — Philip 
 Bommaney ; ' Mr. Barter's smiling face was un- 
 changed, though he gave a slight but perceptible 
 start at the name, and repeated it. 
 
 ' Do you know it ? ' asked Philip. To the 
 ears of his companion there was something 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 which the sanguine-faced, red- 
 waistcoated lodge-keeper was taking his nightly
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 127 
 
 constitutional. They answered the touch of the 
 hat with which he saluted them. 
 
 ' Which is your way ? ' asked Mr. Barter. 
 
 'Westward/ said Phil. 
 
 ' Mine is east/ said Barter, ' so we part here. 
 We are bound to meet again before long. Good- 
 night.' 
 
 ' Good-night, and many thanks for taking my 
 clumsiness in such good part.' 
 
 Barter's ready smile beamed out again. They 
 shook hands before parting like old acquaintances, 
 and Philip walked on, through the incessant noise 
 of Holborn into quieter Bloomsbury Street, along 
 the eastern side of Bedford Square, where the 
 bare trees were shivering in a bath of fog, and 
 into Gower Street. Half way down that hideous 
 thoroughfare he came upon a house, one of the few 
 which still retain the old lamp -iron and ex- 
 tinguisher before their doors, and knocking, was 
 admitted by a trim maid, with the smiling alacrity 
 due to a frequent and favoured visitor, and by
 
 128 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 her conducted to the drawing-room, where sat a 
 young lady engaged in a transparent pretence of 
 being absorbed in a novel. The pretence vanished 
 as the door closed behind the handmaiden, and 
 the young lady jumped up and ran forward to 
 meet him, with such a glad welcome in her face 
 as answered the appeal in his own. It does not 
 need that we should look at her with Philip's 
 eyes to pronounce her charmingly pretty, or to 
 admire the face, at once shy and frank, with 
 which she nestled beside him. 
 
 ' 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.' 
 
 1 You work too much, Phil.' She did her best 
 to ignore the second item of his day's occupation, 
 but the deepened flush and her avoidance of her 
 lover's eyes answered it more effectively than 
 words could have done. ' You are getting quite
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPEXTA>;CE 129 
 
 pale and thin. Xo wonder, sitting all alone all 
 day long in those musty old chambers.' 
 
 I "Well, you see, Patty, the more I work, the 
 sooner I shall cease to be all alone.' The flush 
 deepened again, and the hand trembled in his 
 like a caught bird. 'And as for working too 
 much, I don't believe that's possible. Work 
 never killed anybody yet, and idleness has killed 
 a good many. It's better to work than sit still 
 and wait for briefs which never come. There's no 
 sensation more delightful than that of looking at 
 a good day's work, and thinking that every line 
 and word has brought me nearer to you.' 
 
 His tenderness conquered her slryness, and 
 she nestled closer still, looking up at him with a 
 whole-hearted admiration and affection. He felt 
 a little sad and unworthy under it, as almost any 
 honest fellow would have been sure to do, and yet 
 it was wonderfully sweet to him, and more than 
 reward enough for any effort. 
 
 I I wish I could help you, Phil. I wish I 
 
 VOL. 1 K
 
 130 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE II 
 
 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 our minds long ago that 
 no more was to be said about that.' He was 
 tender still — he could be nothing else with her 
 — but there was a touch of sternness 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's act by which you suffered. I should 
 have been a scoundrel if I had done otherwise.' 
 
 1 And are you to do all ? and am I to do 
 nothing ? It is selfish to keep all the generosity 
 to yourself.' 
 
 He laughed as if he found this female paradox 
 a pleasant fancy, but she was not to be put off so. 
 
 ' If the subject pains you, as I know it does,
 
 II YOUNG ME. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 131 
 
 dear, please understand why I speak of it, I 
 don't want you to think I take your sacrifice as 
 you pretend 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 
 everybody would have done. Don't grudge me 
 my gratitude ; you did it for the love of me.' 
 
 1 1 didn't do it for the love of you,' said Phil, 
 laughing tenderly ; ' how often am I to tell you 
 that, you little mountain of obstinacy ? I did it 
 because it was the right thing. I don't say, mind 
 you, that it wasn't easier to do it for you than it 
 might have been for somebody I didn't know or 
 care for ; but that — as you will see quite clearly 
 if you'll bring your naturally logical mind to bear 
 upon it — makes the thing so much the less 
 creditable, provided there was any credit due to 
 it at all.' 
 
 The loving feminine scorn of this masculine 
 process of reasoning was expressed in a single 
 glance, and was delightful to see.
 
 132 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE II 
 
 ' It only means waiting a little longer before I 
 claim you.' 
 
 The^girl would fain have asked, 'Why should 
 you wait when I have enough for both by your 
 gift ? What does it matter which of us it is who 
 has the money — 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 she burns to 
 express them, and find what answer she can to 
 questions she dare not offer. . Philip had repaired 
 her loss by beggaring himself. That was noble. 
 But now he persisted in deferring their marriage, 
 and had buried himself in that lofty sarcophagus 
 in Gable Inn, resolved only to claim her, though 
 she was all his own already, when he had rein- 
 stated his fortunes by his labour. That was 
 noble also, perhaps, but in her own heart she 
 thought it a trifle foolish — say Quixotic, not to 
 be too severe. She would rather have seen his
 
 ir YOUNG ME. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 133 
 
 ardour find a more commonplace expression. She 
 had a general sort of belief that whatever Philip 
 did was bound to be right, and yet this actual 
 experience rather jarred with that assumption. 
 
 They found other themes in a while, and 
 talked of the future and the happiness it would 
 bring. That Philip was going to be rich and 
 famous was a prime article in Patty's creed, and 
 he himself, though he had soberer hopes, was not 
 likely to miss any chance of success which labour 
 might bring him. He was more than modest 
 enough in his conception of his own powers, and 
 was often doubtful as to the fulfilment of the 
 higher ambitions which are the necessary fuel of 
 all artistic fires. Without those fires the chill of 
 modesty will fall to the frost of cowardice, and 
 in Art cowardice means indolence. In his 
 moments of exultation — and these came generally 
 at their strongest when he was in his sweetheart's 
 society — success looked easy enough. The 
 memory of her undoubted belief in him came
 
 134 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE ir 
 
 upon him often with a glow reflected from those 
 magnificently hopeful moments. But then at 
 times of : depression it grew to look no more than 
 a foolish unattainable dream. All young artists 
 have times when they are going to be great — 
 when the glory proper to white hairs makes a 
 halo round unwrinkled fronts and curls, brown or 
 golden. They have times when the smartest turn 
 of verse, the most delightful inventions of nar- 
 rative, the most exquisite contrast of colour or 
 mould of form their genius can compass are 
 stricken through and through with the horror of 
 commonplace. But when a man of the artistic 
 genus has once so far learned his own nature he 
 has made a great advance towards the fulfilment 
 of his ambitions. He has to learn that just as 
 the hot fit is followed by the cold the cold fit is 
 succeeded by the hot. He knows how inter- 
 mittent he is. He learns to mistrust his own 
 mistrust of himself. The periods of depression 
 grow less frequent, and the depression grows less
 
 II . YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 135 
 
 lasting. And then, just as the cold fit becomes 
 less chilling to the one, the fit of exultation grows 
 less intoxicating. The halo beams less bright — 
 less near. 
 
 Yet Philip, with the girl's eyes worshipping 
 him, and her sweet voice cooing hope and praise, 
 and her hands knitted on his shoulder, and her 
 warm breath fanning his cheek, gave himself up 
 to the vision, and felt his 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- twenty and sweet eighteen in 
 love with one another. On this occasion it came 
 as a summons to supper. The summoner was a 
 stout and jovial elderly gentleman, about whose 
 somewhat commonplace British exterior there was, 
 to Philip's mind, a reflection of the nimbus which 
 glorified Patty to his mind, for he was Patty's 
 father. He had been called Old Brown at school 
 when he was young — he had been called Old Brown 
 in the country, and the prefix had found him out
 
 136 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE . II 
 
 in town without the need for anybody to breathe 
 a whisper of it. He was Old Brown to his new 
 acquaintances in London before a month had 
 gone by. The name suggests a beverage which 
 is not unlike Old Brown himself — -being mild 
 and nutty to the taste as he to the mental palate 
 — ripe and genial. He had a moist twinkle of 
 the eye, — the look which bespeaks the kindly 
 humorist, — and his slightly protruding under lip 
 seemed covertly to taste the flavour of unspoken 
 jokes. Old Brown's jokes were mainly left un- 
 spoken, but he spent a good part of his life in 
 laughing without any very apparent reason for 
 laughter, and may have been internally the way 
 he looked to be. 
 
 He shook hands with Philip, and chucked 
 Patty under the chin with a waggish aspect, which 
 called an appealing blush into the girl's face. 
 Perhaps the blush stayed the intended quip, 
 but any way the old gentleman contented him- 
 self with a beaming laugh, and led the way
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 137 
 
 to the supper table, rubbing his hands and 
 chuckling. 
 
 The meal was quietly jovial, and if, after it, 
 Old Brown was not quite so fast asleep as he 
 pretended to be, at least his patience gave the. 
 lovers the shelter they needed. He snored in 
 mellow murmurs from behind his bandanna, and 
 they sat and talked together in low tones lest 
 they might awaken him, until the time came for 
 parting. 
 
 Outside the mist had given place to a dull 
 persistent rain, and a peevish wind was complain- 
 ing in area and chimney cowl. Philip turned to 
 the street with a pleasantly haunting vision of 
 Patty's vivacious face outlined against the warmth 
 and brightness of the hall. The touch of her 
 good -night kiss lingered on his lips like live 
 velvet, and he carried warmth and brightness 
 enough within him to defy all the rain that ever 
 rained, and all the wind that ever blew on 
 smoky London.
 
 138 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 The rain had cleared the streets, and the 
 occasional gleam of a policeman's cape or a furtive 
 figure seeking the shelter of a doorway against 
 the drifting showers was all he saw as he bored 
 his way against the rising wind to the corner of 
 Holborn. He was so absorbed by that fancy of 
 music to which his own quick tread kept time 
 that a shuffling step behind him rapidly drawing 
 nearer failed to reach his sense. But as he came 
 to the corner, a hand clutched his arm. 
 
 He turned, with the quick defensive gesture 
 natural to a man so accosted at such a time, and 
 faced the unexpected figure. An old man, clad 
 in filthy fluttering rags, stood staring at him, 
 with both hands stretched out. The rags shook 
 as much with the horrible cough that tore him as 
 with the cruel wind. He was a dreadful creature, 
 with watery eyes, and a head and moustache of 
 dirty gray. His long and unvenerable hairs 
 strayed loose beneath the dunghill relic which 
 crowned them. The rain was in his hair and
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 139 
 
 beard, and had so soaked his tattered dress that 
 it clung to him like the feathers of a drenched 
 fowl. He shook and wheezed and panted, and 
 gripped the air with tremulous fingers, and 
 through the rents in his clothing his white flesh 
 gleamed in the gaslight. 
 
 The look of surprise and pity which Philip 
 bent upon this unclean apparition was startled 
 into one of sudden fear and horror. In the very- 
 instant when these emotions struck him, they 
 were reflected in the other's face. The man 
 made a motion to run, but Philip clutched his 
 arm, and he stood cowering and unresisting. 
 
 1 You ! Here in London ? ' 
 
 1 Phil/ said the spectre imploringly, ' for God's 
 sake help me. I didn't know it was you, when 
 
 I followed you. I thought ' his voice trailed 
 
 into silence. 
 
 1 You have come to this ? ' 
 
 1 Yes, Phil ; this is what I've come to.' The 
 cough took him here again, and tore him so that
 
 140 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 he was fain to lean against the shutters of a shop 
 near 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 for three days. 
 For God's sake ! give me some money. I'll — I'll 
 go away ; I'll never trouble you again.' 
 
 1 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's contents. He took 
 his keys and an unvalued trifle or two from the 
 handful, and held the rest out towards his father. 
 The old man shrunk from him with a terrible 
 appeal and shamefaced gratitude which cut the 
 son's heart like a knife. 
 
 1 Where can I go to ? '
 
 ii YOUNG MR. BARTER S REPENTANCE 141 
 
 'Anywhere out of London. You are not — ■ 
 safe here. Go away. "Write to me here.' He 
 thrust an envelope on which his name and 
 address were written into the old man's dirty 
 trembling hand. * You must never come to see 
 me. Promise me that.' 
 
 1 1 promise/ he said ; and, thrusting the money 
 and the envelope somewhere among his rags, 
 stood silent for a while. ' I'm afraid/ he said, ' I 
 acted very foolishly and very ' 
 
 Then his voice trailed away again. 
 
 ' God help you ! ' said Philip with a choking 
 voice. 
 
 1 You'll shake hands, won't you, Phil ? ' said 
 the old man. Phil took the proffered hand. 
 ' It's something/ said Bommaney the elder, cling- 
 ing to him, ' to feel an honest man's hand again. 
 God bless you, Phil ! — God bless you ! ' 
 
 Philip stood silent, and the old man, with 
 another shame-stricken glance upon him, moved 
 away. His son watched him for a second or two,
 
 142 YOUNG MR. BARTER S REPENTANCE n 
 
 as he slunk, coughing and shivering, along the 
 gleaming pavement, and then turned 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 son 
 had given him. 
 
 ' I beg your pardon, Mr. Bommaney ; if you 
 please, sir.' He started at the sound of a voice 
 which had been familiar to him for years. ' I 
 should like a word with you, sir ; if you please.'
 
 IY 
 
 James Hornett was less changed than his old 
 employer, but it was evident that he too had 
 fallen upon evil times. For a mere second the 
 familiar tones of his voice were no more than 
 familiar to Bommaney, whose mind was confused 
 by long misery and hunger and sleeplessness, and 
 the shock of his late encounter. But when he 
 turned and saw Hornett's long thumb and finger 
 scraping at his stubbly jaws, the gesture and the 
 attitude of apology brought him back to mind at 
 once. Hornett's coat sleeve was torn, and showed 
 his arm half way down to the elbow, but revealed 
 no hint of linen. The collar of his frock-coat 
 was buttoned tightly about his neck, and there 
 was a sparkling metallic rime upon his cheeks
 
 144 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 and chin and upper lip. Bommaney was ashamed 
 before him, and afraid of him, and only some 
 faint reminder of self-respect and the pride of 
 earlier days held him back from the impulse to 
 run away. 
 
 ' You're not afraid of me, sir ? ' said James 
 Hornett. He had always smiled, and was smil- 
 ing even now. The smile was no more than a 
 contortion of the muscles of the face, which made 
 a long mirthless crease on either cheek, and left 
 the eyes untouched by the least light of sympathy. 
 It gave him a propitiatory dog -like look, and 
 there was a hint of fawning in his attitude which 
 matched it perfectly and carried out the likeness. 
 1 You remember me, sir ? ' he went on, for Bom- 
 maney stared at him so wildly that there seemed 
 room for reasonable doubt on that point. ' Hor- 
 nett, sir. James Hornett. Your faithful servant 
 for thirty 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't
 
 II YOUNG ME. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 145 
 
 it V Hornett went on, with his unchanging smile. 
 There was a good deal of hunger and even triumph 
 in his small soul, but they found no other out- 
 ward expression, and his attitude and voice were 
 as apologetic and retiring as of old. ' It was 
 rather a surprise to me, sir, when I recognised 
 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 the fugitive's name. 
 
 c Hush ! ' said Bommaney. ' Don't call me by 
 that name. Come away from here.' 
 
 A policeman strolled along the street, with an 
 echoing tread, and as the two slunk past him he 
 turned a casual glance upon them. The glance 
 touched them like a galvanic shock, and they 
 would have run if they had had courage for such 
 an indiscretion. 
 
 1 What do you want with me ? ' asked Bom- 
 maney, when the policeman was out of sight and 
 hearing ; Hornett walking beside him, with his 
 
 VOL. I L
 
 146 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE II 
 
 lean, propitiatory fingers at his chin, looked up 
 with hesitating meekness. 
 
 ' Well, you see, sir/ he responded, ' your fall 
 was mine, sir ; I was supposed ' — he coughed 
 behind his hand here to indicate apology for the 
 introduction of a theme so necessarily disagree- 
 able to the other's feelings — ' I was supposed, 
 sir, to have been in your confidence. I made 
 many applications for employment, and nobody 
 would employ me. Young Mr. Weatherall, sir, 
 promised, personally, that if I called again, he'd 
 kick me down the steps.' 
 
 Bommaney groaned. 
 
 1 What do you want with me ? ' he asked 
 again. 
 
 They were standing by this time outside the 
 doors of a public-house, and the wind-driven rain 
 was pelting down heavily. 
 
 ' I thought, sir ' said Hornett ; ' I'm very 
 
 hard pressed, sir.' The dog -like, propitiatory 
 smile never varied. ' I was following Mr. Phil
 
 ii YOUNG MR BARTER'S REPENTANCE 147 
 
 myself, sir, in the hope that his kindness might 
 run to a trine.' 
 
 1 Come in/ said Boinmaney ; and Hornett 
 eagerly accepting the invitation, they entered the 
 house together. There was an odour of frying in 
 the room, and a hissing noise proceeded from a 
 sort of metal caldron which stood over a row 
 of gas-jets on the pewter counter. A printed 
 legend, ' Sausage and Mashed, 3d.' was pasted on 
 the wooden partition at the side of the box they 
 entered, and on the mirror which faced them, and 
 displayed their own squalid misery to themselves. 
 A year ago the fare would have seemed un- 
 inviting to either at his hungriest moment, but 
 now Bommaney called for it with a dreadful 
 suppressed eagerness, and, the barman serving 
 them with a tantalising leisure, they watched 
 every movement with the eyes of famine. 
 
 ' I've got a little place, sir, of my own/ whis- 
 pered Hornett, when the pangs of hunger were 
 appeased, ' It's very humble, but you could put
 
 148 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 up for the night there.' Bommaney made no 
 answer, but the two set out again together 
 through the rain, and, pausing once only for 
 the purchase of a flat pint bottle of whisky, 
 made straight for Fleeter's Kents. 
 
 All that nine hundred and ninety-nine in a 
 thousand of the many thousands who pass it 
 every day could tell you of Fleeter's Kents is that 
 it makes a narrow black gash in the walls of the 
 great thoroughfare, and that it neighbours Gable 
 Inn. It is slimy in its very atmosphere all 
 winter through, and its air in summer time is 
 made of dust and grit and shadow. The old 
 Inn elbows it disdainfully on one side, and on 
 the other a great modern stuccoed pile overtops 
 it with a parvenu insolence. It is the home 
 naturally of the very poor ; for no 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 a day for lodging and 
 bodily sustenance elsewhere.
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE U9 
 
 Hornett led the way up a set of narrow and 
 broken stairs, and having reached the uppermost 
 story of the house, pushed open a broken door, 
 which, depending from a single hinge, scratched 
 noisily upon the uneven flooring of the room. 
 His guest stood shivering in the doorway until a 
 match sputtered and fizzed in Hornett's fingers. 
 Then, guided by that precarious light, he ad- 
 vanced. Hornett lit a candle which adhered by 
 its own grease to the filthy wall and had already 
 made a great cone of smoke with a tremulous 
 outline there. There was a small grate, with a 
 mere double-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 chok- 
 ing in the smoke, and bathing their chilled hands 
 in the flame. Bommaney drew the flat bottle 
 from a pocket hidden somewhere in his multitu- 
 dinous rags, and drank. Hornett watched him 
 greedily, with hands involuntarily and uncon-
 
 150 YOUNG ME. BARTER S REPENTANCE II 
 
 sciously extended. Then when he had drunk in 
 turn, they each shivered over the fire again, 
 stealing furtive glances at each other, each 
 mightily disconcerted when he met the other's 
 eye. Bommaney had aged dreadfully during his 
 year of hiding, and Hornett, who had drunk his 
 employer's health upon his birthdays often 
 enough to know his age to a day, could yet 
 scarce believe that the dreadful spectre who knelt 
 beside him numbered less than fourscore years. 
 
 One question perplexed Hornett's mind. How 
 came it, he asked himself over and over again, 
 that in the space of a mere twelvemonths a man 
 who started with at least eight thousand pounds 
 could have fallen into such a depth of poverty ? 
 Eight thousand pounds, if absolutely nothing 
 were done with it for its own increase, meant 
 royal living for a score of years for an unencum- 
 bered man. Hornett longed to satisfy his own 
 curiosity upon this point, and felt as if he dared 
 not ask the question for his life. He framed a
 
 U YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 151 
 
 score of ways by which he might approach it, 
 with a road of retreat behind him, and at last, as 
 if in spite of himself, he said, with apologetic 
 impudence, 
 
 1 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 the creases of his smile 
 up and down his stubbly cheeks. 
 
 1 Do you think,' the old man demanded 
 passionately, ' that I took away a penny ? ' 
 
 Hornett was afraid to rise. There was such 
 a despair and so much fury in the other's looks 
 that he could do nothing but crouch at his feet 
 with his mean meek face turned fearfully 
 towards Bommaney, and his body cowering. 
 
 'You think I took that eight thousand 
 pounds ? ' Bommaney quavered, with a voice of 
 bitter disdain.
 
 152 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 He had never in his life regretted anything 
 so profoundly as he had regretted his resistance 
 of that temptation. To have had all the blame 
 and shame, and to endure all the miseries a con- 
 victed thief might earn for himself, to have been 
 an outcast and a pauper, only because he had 
 been resolute against temptation ! It is easy 
 enough for a man whom circumstances keep 
 honest to think himself honourable beyond the 
 chance of temptation. But misery has the virtue 
 of Ithuriel's spear, with a difference. As the one 
 touched the beast and transformed him to the 
 seeming of a high intelligence, so will the other 
 touch a seemingly impregnable armour of bright 
 honour, and turn it into tinder, leaving the poor 
 beast revealed and unprotected from his own 
 base natural longings. The poor Bommaney was 
 maddened to think he had not done what the 
 other's thoughts charged him with, even though 
 he passionately rebelled against the accusation. 
 
 1 When did you ever know me to be a rogue,
 
 ti YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 153 
 
 James Hornett ? ' he asked, with an air and voice 
 to which his passion lent something like dignity. 
 1 When did you ever know me defraud a man of 
 a farthing ? ' 
 
 ' ' Never, sir, I'm sure/ Hornett responded, 
 not doubting in his own mind that Bommaney 
 
 was guilty. ■ But ' 
 
 ' But what ? ' cried Bommaney. ' My own 
 son, my own flesh and blood, would hardly 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 man of you, 
 and lavished kindness on you. Nobody has a 
 minute's trust in me — nobody thinks of mis- 
 fortune or disaster. I was right to run away 
 and hide myself, for nobody would have believed 
 me if I had stayed and told the truth.' 
 
 Hornett looked more frightened than before 
 after this outburst, but Bommaney read incred- 
 ulity in his face, and answered it with an added 
 passion.
 
 154 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE II 
 
 ' What good would it do me to tell lies to you ? 
 Suppose I made you believe me, am I such a fool as 
 to think your pity could set me on my legs 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 the room. 
 
 ' 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 that the old man was mad 
 — his eyes blazed so, and his voice and gestures 
 were so tempestuous. 
 
 ' It was lost,' said Bommaney. ' I lost it, 
 Heaven knows how. I've thought a thousand 
 times,' he said, through his clenched teeth, ' that 
 that young Barter must have had it' 
 
 ' Young Barter, sir ?' said Hornett. 
 
 Then Bommaney told all he knew of the 
 story of his own loss, and at a certain point in
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 155 
 
 the narrative Hornett started and made a step 
 forward. He remembered the night well enough 
 — he had reason to remember it. An appoint- 
 ment for the theatre that evening had led him to 
 call upon a brother clerk in Gable Inn, and he 
 had seen young Mr. Barter leaving his chambers 
 in what had struck him at the time as being an 
 odd and stealthy fashion. He had remarked it 
 for the moment, and had forgotten it afterwards, 
 as men forget a thousand things of the sort 
 which have no interest personal to themselves. 
 But now he saw young Mr. Barter's figure with 
 a singular distinctness, and the face turned round 
 in the gaslight was again as visible as it had 
 been at the moment. He thought he read a 
 meaning in it now. But for this slight con- 
 firmation of his employer's story he would prob- 
 ably have disbelieved it, but the accidental 
 character of the clue weighed with him, an 
 apparent touch of romance in it gave it a value 
 beyond its merits.
 
 156 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 1 Could you tell me, sir/ he asked, ' exactly 
 what time it was when you left Mr. Barter's 
 office ? ' 
 
 'No,' said Bommaney, suddenly weary after 
 his outburst of self-exculpation, ' I don't know. 
 It was after banking hours. It was dark ; he 
 had to light the gas. What if I could ? What 
 would that have to do with it ? ' 
 
 1 Well, you see, sir,' Hornett answered, ' I'm 
 not likely to forget that evening. Of all the 
 evenings of my life, sir, I made a call at Gable 
 Inn myself, sir, at Number One. If young Mr. 
 Barter had found the notes he wouldn't care to 
 face you again, and he mightn't have answered 
 your knock at the door, though he might have 
 heard it.' 
 
 1 Any fool could tell me that,' said Bommaney 
 roughly. ' What do you mean ? ' 
 
 ' I've noticed, sir,' said Hornett, with marked 
 humility, as if he apologised for having said any- 
 thing, ' that young Mr. Barter is a gentleman who
 
 ir YOUNG ME. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 157 
 
 goes about in rather a large way, and noisy way, 
 sir. He's a biggish man, as it is, and to look 
 at him at first you'd fancy that he was bigger 
 than he is. He talks very loud and cheery, sir, 
 and he bangs things about a good deal.' 
 
 1 Well ? ' said Bommaney, irritated by these 
 slow preliminaries, ' what about it all ? ' 
 
 He could see that his late clerk was lead- 
 ing 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 a cat. I was just on 
 the ground-floor of Xumber One as he was lock- 
 ing the door behind him. Locking it, don't you 
 see, sir,' said Hornett, beginning to be fired by 
 his imagination, and speaking eagerly, ' so as not 
 to make a noise in pulling it to behind him. I 
 suppose I made some sort of a noise in going 
 behind him, but any way, he looked up at me — 
 I can see him now ! ' he cried, with a swift con- 
 viction, ' as if he was here at this very minute,
 
 158 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 white and cowardly. That's what he was, sir. 
 White and cowardly, I can see him now/ 
 
 Bommaney grasped him by the wrist. 
 
 ' Do you remember the time ? ' he asked, 
 passing one hand confusedly through the tumbled 
 and disgraceful old locks of his hair. ' Do you 
 remember when I left the office ? Do you 
 remember when you left it ? ' 
 
 ' Almost directly, sir, after you. But you 
 drove, sir, and I walked. I stopped, and had a 
 little conversation with a friend, and just a social 
 glass that might have kept me back five minutes, 
 sir. I was going to dine with Mr. Marshall (White 
 and Fielding's Mr. Marshall, sir) before the theatre.' 
 
 Bommaney released his wrist, and dropping 
 on his knees before the fire again, warmed his 
 hands absently and stared into the blaze. 
 
 ' The notes were all hundreds, James,' he said, 
 after a pause. ' They were stopped at the Bank, 
 I know, because I saw the advertisement. It 
 wouldn't be easy to get rid of them.'
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 159 
 
 ' There are ways and means, sir/ said Hornett. 
 1 They'd have to be disposed of at a loss, of course 
 — a heavy loss — and kept quiet for a consider- 
 able time.' 
 
 I Have you heard of any of them coming into 
 circulation ? ' asked Bommaney. 
 
 I I haven't been in the way to hear of anything, 
 sir,' the clerk answered mournfully, ' but,' with a 
 sidelong look at his old employer, ' if I could only 
 get to look a bit respectable, I could make in- 
 quiries in an hour. I have no doubt I could 
 find out, sir/ 
 
 'My boy believes I'm guilty, like the rest;' 
 said the old man, moaning and shivering and 
 coughing again. The passion of his protest and 
 the warmth of heart which Hornett's returning 
 confidence had taught him had all died away, 
 and he was his bankrupt, disgraced, and broken 
 self again, old and maudlin, and strickenly con- 
 scious of his miseries. 
 
 1 Phil might help me/ he said shakily. ' He
 
 160 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 could, but he won't. He's got plenty of money. 
 If I'd been a rogue, James Hornett,' and there he 
 flashed up again, ever so little, ' I could have 
 robbed my own flesh and blood 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 any minute.' 
 
 ' 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 the rest, as far 
 as it would go, amongst the poorest of the 
 creditors.' 
 
 Bommaney turned back towards the fire, and 
 drooped there. He seemed very impassive under 
 this intelligence, but he was deeply moved by it 
 all the same. The sense of his son's high feeling 
 of honour gave him a keen throb of pride, and 
 then he thought bitterly that his own ill-luck
 
 rt YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 161 
 
 pursued his offspring. The loss was double. It 
 had disgraced and ruined him, and had robbed 
 his son of his inheritance. 
 
 ' Hornett,' he said, ' James Hornett.' 
 
 'Yes, sir.' 
 
 ' I was brought up/ the old man said, in a 
 muffled voice, advancing and retiring his hands 
 before the fire, and chafing them automatically, 
 f I was brought up by Christian parents. I never 
 did a dishonourable act in all 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 believe in religion. I 
 don't believe in being honest. It's a — it's a 
 vile wicked world, Hornett, and it's my belief 
 the devil rules it.' 
 
 ' Oh, sir,' cried Hornett, ' you mustn't talk like 
 this, sir. You must excuse me speaking free, sir, 
 but I can't stand by and hear you talk like that. 
 I can't listen to it, sir — I can't really. I've never 
 said a disrespectful word to you, Mr. Bommaney, 
 
 vol. i M
 
 162 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 but I really must speak out now, sir. It isn't 
 respectable, sir, to talk like that.' 
 
 After this there was a long silence, and Bom- 
 maney, who had repouched the bottle after his 
 last application to it, consulted it again, and 
 handed it wordlessly to Hornett, without looking 
 at him. 
 
 ' Phil might,' he murmured in a while — ' he 
 might be brought to believe me. He's an honest 
 man himself, James — a very honest high-minded 
 man indeed. I must look where he lives,' he 
 murmured, seeking for the envelope his son had 
 given him. ' He gave me his address.' 
 
 ' His address, sir,' said Hornett. ' You could 
 almost lay your hand on him. He lives there. 
 That's his window with the light in it.' Bom- 
 maney moved to the window, and followed with 
 his glance the direction of Hornett's outstretched 
 finger. There was a window a few feet higher 
 than the one at which he stood, and half-hidden 
 from observation by a stone parapet. A shadow
 
 ii YOUNG MR BARTER'S REPENTANCE 163 
 
 obscured the light, and moved about the ceiling, 
 visible from below. 
 
 ' I saw him there to-night, sir,' said Hornett. 
 ' 1 saw his face at the window. He put a glass 
 of flowers outside. That's his shadow moving 
 about there now.' 
 
 ' Phil ! ' groaned the wretched father, straining 
 his dirty wasted hands together. ' Phil ! ' 
 
 1 I'm not the figure, sir,' said Hornett, ' to call 
 upon a gentleman like Mr. Phil ; nor yet are you, 
 sir, if you'll excuse my saying so. But if you'd 
 let me go, sir, and put the case to him, he might 
 come and see you here, sir, and you might set 
 yourself straight with him, sir, which would at 
 least,' the seedy man added, somewhat moved by 
 the old man's tears and tremblings, ' be an advan- 
 tage to a father's heart.' 
 
 Bommaney stood in silence, looking upward. 
 The moving shadow settled itself upon the ceil- 
 ing in a huge silhouette, distinctly traceable. 
 There was no doubting it was Phil's dear head
 
 164 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE ir 
 
 that threw the shadow, himself invisible, so near, 
 so far. The foolish outcast's heart ached bitterly, 
 and he stretched both hands towards the shadow, 
 not knowing that he moved. 
 
 ' Shall I venture, sir ? ' asked Mr. Hornett, 
 more moved than ever, and coughing 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.'
 
 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 due develop- 
 ment of this history to go back a little, and to take 
 up Mr. Barter on the day following the commis- 
 sion of his crime. The young man felt that he 
 was unable to afford candour, and discreetly 
 avoided the naming of his own action. Eight 
 thousand pounds is a sum which most people 
 would find tempting. Young Mr. Barter would 
 never have found it tempting in the criminal 
 way (though, if he had given his mind to the 
 consideration, he could at any time have seen 
 how enviable its unencumbered possessor might 
 be) if he had not at the moment felt himself
 
 166 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 under considerable pressure. Mr. Barter's fleshy 
 and well-formed fingers were somewhat too fam- 
 iliar with the feel of cards. These fingers of his 
 were peculiarly dexterous to look at, and had 
 even an unnecessary braggadocio air of dexterity 
 when he was engaged in his favourite occupation. 
 Experienced people watched his shuffling and 
 dealing with great care. In Mr. Barter's frank 
 and engaging countenance, and in that ready 
 smile in which the faultless teeth shone so con- 
 spicuously, there was no hint of danger to the 
 most unwary. Even the wariest, listening to his 
 genial mellow laughter, and seeing the jolly 
 shoulders shake with mirth, were inclined to 
 think him a loyal honest -hearted fellow. His 
 loud swagger, his frank rollicking gait, his hail- 
 good-fellow-well-met shake of the hand, the other 
 hand clapped upon the shoulder, the noisy greet- 
 ing, and that unfailing smile, not merely disarmed 
 suspicion, but made the mere fancy of it impos- 
 sibly absurd. But young Mr. Barter had accus-
 
 II YOUNG ME. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 167 
 
 tomed himself to associate with people whose 
 experiences had forced them to be observant, and 
 to these the dexterous caressing fingers with 
 which he manipulated all instruments employed 
 in games of chance seemed to justify a fairly 
 constant watchfulness. The fingers handled the 
 cards as if they loved them, as if they had been 
 accustomed to them from the cradle. The tips 
 turned back a good deal, and the nails hooked a 
 little forward. There were little bulbs of tact at 
 every tip, the hands were made for a gambler, 
 and could by no possibility have belonged to any- 
 body else. 
 
 The chief ground for the young man's sorrow 
 may be very easily and briefly stated. The packet 
 which the unfortunate cruelly-tempted Bommaney 
 had let fall in his half-drunken abstraction on 
 the floor of young Mr. Barter's private room was 
 made up exclusively, as we know already, of notes 
 for one hundred pounds. Now Bank of England 
 notes for one hundred pounds, though valuable.
 
 168 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 and easily enough employed in all civilised coun- 
 tries when honestly come by, are only to be got 
 rid of when dishonestly acquired at great risk and 
 loss. A note for a mere five pounds may pass 
 through scores of hands before being stopped at 
 the bank. Tens, so the experienced in such mat- 
 ters will tell you, are a little difficult. Twenties 
 are inquired into rather carefully. Fifties are 
 positively dangerous to handle in this way. 
 Hundreds are, except after great lapse of time, 
 almost impossible ; and as for a thousand, a man 
 might almost as well steal a white elephant as a 
 bank-note of that value, except that it will cost 
 him nothing for keep, unless you count the 
 tremor of soul and nerve, which is surely worth 
 something, in which a man criminally possessed 
 of another'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 farthing of 
 his ill-got gains. There are many men in the
 
 ii YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 169 
 
 world, the world's experience proves it hourly, 
 who set so small a price upon their self-respect, 
 that they will sell it for a shilling, for a drink, 
 for a word. But there is hardly any man so 
 lost to the natural human desire for self-approval 
 that he will actually give away his self-respect 
 for nothing. Xow tins absurd transaction young 
 Mr. Barter, when he took time to think about 
 things, appeared to himself to have made. 
 
 He was not, and never had been, a great 
 reader ; he gave up his mind to pursuits which 
 he found more attractive than the tranquil fields 
 and lanes of literature. Yet he remembered, in 
 a dim sort of way, either that he had read some- 
 where in his schoolboy days, or that a fanciful 
 old nurse had told him, a story of a person some- 
 where, who, being possessed of a great chest of 
 money, went one day to look at it, and found 
 that his hard cash had changed to withered 
 leaves. Precisely such a transformation had 
 overtaken that eight thousand pounds, at the
 
 170 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 moment when it had fallen from the hands of a 
 man who might have made an honest use of it. 
 The fable was, and was not, true, so far as he re- 
 membered, and his fancy dwelt curiously about 
 the history. There was no possibility of turning 
 back the withered leaves to gold, and making 
 them jingle and glitter again as only one's own 
 ready money can jingle and glitter. But, useless 
 as these crisp and rustling leaves of paper were 
 to him, they held still all their old potentialities, 
 and in the hands of honest men or courageous 
 rascals each leaf might still transmute itself into 
 a hundred golden emblems of sovereignty and 
 power. He was neither that honest man nor 
 that courageous rascal, and the money grew to be 
 a sort of devilish tantalising fetish to him. Be- 
 fore he had owned it a fortnight, he had felt a 
 hundred times he could have burned it out of the 
 exasperation of mere spite against it. 
 
 He heard, of course, of Bommaney's flight, and 
 of the failure of the old-established business house.
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 171 
 
 People talked about these tilings a good deal for 
 a time, and he himself listened to and took part 
 in many speculations as to Bommaney's where- 
 abouts, and the means he would take to 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 
 connect young Mr. Barter with the lost eight 
 thousand pounds, yet it took much courage, and 
 a considerable amount of inward spurring, to bring 
 himself to talk about the business. When a man 
 carries a secret of a quite harmless nature, it 
 happens often, as almost everybody knows, that 
 casual words and quite innocent glances startle 
 him with hints of understanding and participa- 
 tion. What is it when the detection of the secret 
 involves open shame and penal servitude ? Can 
 a man of genuine courage be a thief? Is not 
 courage after all at the very bottom of all manly 
 honour, of all sound honesty, all true self-respect ?
 
 172 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 How shall a thief be other than a lurking cur, 
 whose whole soul, such as it is, is bent to a 
 mean suspicion that he is suspected, a continuous 
 terror-stricken watchfulness, a sleeping and wak- 
 ing dread of an awful hand-clap on the shoulder ? 
 There are constitutional differences in thieves, no 
 doubt, as there are in other people, but the key- 
 note of the dishonest man's whole thought is 
 fear. 
 
 When, after a day or two, young Mr. Barter 
 had accustomed himself to speak of Bommaney 
 and the lost eight thousand, and had often spoken 
 of them, he began to look out for suggestions that 
 might be useful to himself. He even led the way 
 at times, and speaking to solicitors and barristers 
 of extensive criminal experience, he asked often, 
 for example, how could a scoundrel get rid of such 
 a clumsy handful ? Why didn't the fool cash the 
 notes, he would ask contemptuously, before he left 
 town, and before he was suspected ? Everybody 
 knew of course that the notes had not been
 
 ii YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 173 
 
 presented, and their numbers were advertised in 
 all the daily papers. Now what could a fellow 
 do who had them, by Jingo ? What could he do ? 
 There was no way open, so far as young Mr. 
 Barter could see, and he was wonderfully engag- 
 ing and innocent of the world's wickeder ways as 
 he talked thus with the ablest of his fellow pro- 
 fessionals. 
 
 The fellow professionals cited cases. There 
 was Rosenthal, a noted receiver in his day, to 
 whom a dishonest clerk had sold five thousand 
 pounds for five hundred. Rosenthal had held 
 the notes for six years, and had then put them 
 cautiously on the Continental market. He was 
 an old hand, was Rosenthal, and very clever and 
 leary, but they had bowled him out. The clerk 
 was wanted on another charge, and turned Queen's 
 evidence against the receiver. Almost all the 
 stories had this kind of termination, because the 
 legal gentlemen whom young Mr. Barter con- 
 sulted remembered mainly cases in which they
 
 174 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 or their friends had been engaged, or cases which 
 had resulted in criminal proceedings. Others 
 there certainly were, but they were vague and 
 necessarily without those guiding particulars 
 which he desired. 
 
 It has been already hinted that the young 
 man was a gambler, and it is likely that most 
 of the reasons which made the money seem so 
 welcome to him had their sources at the gaming 
 table. He belonged to one of those clubs which 
 deserve to be numbered among the blessings of 
 modern society — where men do not meet for 
 social intercourse and good-fellowship, or for 
 dining purposes, or for any of the common and 
 amiable reasons which draw men into club-life, 
 but simply and purely to the end that they may 
 win one another's money. It was a joint-stock 
 swindling company to which young Mr. Barter 
 belonged, and within its limits every man proposed 
 to himself to get the better of every other man 
 by such means as lay in his power. A pigeon
 
 ii YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 175 
 
 got in amongst them every now and then, of 
 course — came in well -feathered and went out 
 plucked, but for the main part the rooks pecked 
 hungrily at one another, and made but little of 
 their time and pains. The one solitary advantage 
 of these corporations is that they gather the 
 depredatory birds together, and lead them to prey 
 upon themselves instead of wandering abroad for 
 the defeathering of the innocent and artless who 
 abound even in these days. The well-constituted 
 mind can hardly fail to take pleasure in the con- 
 templation of these resorts, where Greek meets 
 Greek (in the modern French sense as well as 
 the old heroic) — where scoundrel encounters 
 scoundrel, and learns that the pleasure of being 
 cheated is by no means so great as that of cheating. 
 There were people of widely ranging social 
 position in this curious contingent. One or two 
 men of title, and one or two of the highest social 
 or commercial respectability, lent their names for 
 some inconceivable reason to grace the front page
 
 176 YOUNG MK. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 of the neatly-bound little volume of rules which 
 govern, or sometimes fail to govern, the conduct 
 of the corporation. Mr. Barter rubbed shoulders 
 with young men — very young men they were — 
 who would one day have handles to their names, 
 and enjoy the control of considerable estates. He 
 sat at the same table with men whose birth and 
 antecedents, like those of the immortal Jeames, 
 were shrouded in a mystery. He met men of 
 his own position, who like himself were des- 
 perately glad of being numbered in the same club 
 society with men eminent on the turf, or familiar 
 in the gilded saloons of the great. He liked to 
 think of those gilded saloons ; it might be in- 
 teresting to know what he thought they resembled 
 — most probably a somewhat old - fashioned 
 earthly paradise of ormolu. He bragged inde- 
 fatigably of his club and the people whom he met 
 there. He dated all his private correspondence 
 from it, and spent hundreds of daylight hours 
 above the ivories and the pasteboard.
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 177 
 
 At the time of that foolish and weak-willed 
 Bommaney's disaster there were two or three 
 I.O.U.'s for sums much more considerable than 
 he could afford to part with in the hands of his 
 fellow-members. Law is a necessity to human 
 society. Even a band of brigands can't hang 
 together without it. Debt, outside the club, was 
 by no means a thing to be harshly spoken of, but 
 debt to a fellow-member was a literal millstone 
 round 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 that street accident, and 
 if the old man had known nothing of the young 
 man's courses, he had had it in his power to 
 make him well-to-do. But he had paid his debts 
 once at least, and had more than once had occa- 
 sion to grieve over the boy's handling of the firm's 
 money, and so had made his will entirely in his 
 wife's favour, leaving his son dependent upon her 
 good graces. The mother was disposed to be a 
 
 VOL. I N
 
 178 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE ir 
 
 little sterner than the father had been. Perhaps 
 if young Barter had dreaded her less poor Bom- 
 maney's fallen notes might have been returned to 
 him. 
 
 But, to get on with the story, the young man's 
 chief creditor at the club was one Steinberg, a 
 gentleman whose time appeared to be absolutely 
 at his own disposal, though he was known by 
 some of his fellow-members to have an address 
 in Hatton Garden, and to be more or less of a 
 diamond merchant there. He often carried about 
 with him, in a pocket-book, or in neat little pack- 
 ages of grocer's gay paper, borne in the waistcoat- 
 pocket, a collection of gems of considerable value, 
 and would show them to his intimates with the 
 insouciance of a man who was accustomed to 
 handling things of price. He never was without 
 money, made little journeys at times, which rarely 
 took him away from town for more than a day or 
 two, and was, almost always, wholly unoccupied 
 except for the cards.
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 179 
 
 Now young Barter had a prodigious idea of 
 this gentleman's astuteness. He had no par- 
 ticular belief in his honesty, and he believed him, 
 not altogether unreasonably as the sequel proved, 
 to be initiated into most of the mysteries of 
 modern rascality. This was merely a general 
 notion, based upon statements made by Steinberg 
 himself, and supported by the opinion of his in- 
 timates. Nobody spoke ill of Steinberg ; it was 
 only understood that there was no move upon the 
 board with which he was not familiar. Young 
 Barter, meeting him one evening at the club, 
 whilst Bommaney'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 as it may, he 
 responded with some tartness,
 
 180 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 ' Suppose you'd nobbled them ? ' 
 
 At this chance thrust young Barter turned 
 curiously red and white, and had some ado to 
 recover that open smile of his. 
 
 ' Hang it/ he said, ' you can't suppose I meant 
 it that way. But,' with a half-hysteric courage, 
 ' suppose you had — suppose I had — suppose any- 
 body had — what would he do ? You, I, anybody ? ' 
 
 Mr. Steinberg sipped at his lemon squash — 
 he drank that inspiring liquid all the year round, 
 and nothing else until cards for the day were 
 over — and puffed at his cigar, and looking young 
 Barter full in the face, 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 up to it.' 
 
 ' Rather dangerous, wouldn't it be ? ' said 
 Barter, showing his white teeth in a somewhat 
 forced and ghastly manner. 
 
 ' Everything's dangerous for an ass,' said 
 Steinberg.
 
 II YOUNG MB. BARTERS REPENTANCE 181 
 
 ' I shouldn't have thought/ laughed Barter, 
 1 that that was your line.' 
 
 He spoke as jestingly as he could, but he 
 knew that his laugh was forced, and that the 
 voice in which he spoke was unlike his voice of 
 every day, and he wished, with the whole of his 
 quaking heart, that he had left the theme alone. 
 
 1 Well, no,' said Steinberg, ' I suppose you 
 wouldn't.' He sipped his liquor through a straw, 
 and blew half a dozen rings of smoke from his 
 lips with practised dexterity, and kept a glittering 
 German -Jewish eye on Barter. Perhaps he 
 meant something by the glance, perhaps he meant 
 nothing. He was a rather Machiavelian and 
 sinister-looking personage, was Mr. Steinberg, and 
 there was something even in the calm expression 
 of 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 his eye, 
 which spoke of a penetration and shrewdness 
 very far out of the common. More and more
 
 182 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 young Barter wished that he had not broached 
 this theme with Steinberg. 
 
 He could not help it for his soul. He could 
 feel that his colour was coming and going with 
 a dreadful fluttering alternation. He quailed 
 before the Israelitish eye so shrewdly cocked at 
 him, and when in a very spasm of despair he 
 tried to meet it, he was so abjectly quelled by 
 it that he felt his face a proclamation of his 
 secret. 
 
 Steinberg went on sipping and smoking, and 
 said nothing ; but when the young scoundrel, his 
 companion, had somewhat recovered himself and 
 dared again to look at him, there was the same 
 shrewd and wary glint in his eyes. 
 
 Young Barter had been unhappy enough 
 before this, but after it the money became a 
 burden hateful and horrible. He met Steinberg 
 often, and forced himself to be noisy in his com- 
 pany. In his dread of seeming low-spirited, or 
 ill at ease, he said things about his dead father
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER S REPENTANCE 183 
 
 which he would have left unsaid, had he con- 
 sulted the little good that was left in him ; and 
 Steinberg seemed to watch him very closely. 
 
 Young Barter put off his creditor with pro- 
 mises. He would have lots of money by and 
 by. That seemed credible enough in the posi- 
 tion of affairs, and Steinberg waited. In a while. 
 however, he became exigent, and declined any 
 longer to be satisfied with promises. One night 
 the unhappy rascal, playing all the more because 
 of his troubles, all the more wildly, and certainly 
 all the worse, fell back upon his I.O.U.'s. 
 Steinberg followed him from the club. It was 
 late, and the streets were very quiet. 
 
 ' This won't do, you know, Barter,' said Stein- 
 berg, tapping him on the shoulder 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
 
 184 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE II 
 
 cigar, and looking askant at Barter under the 
 light of a street-lamp which they happened to be 
 nearing at the moment, ' what you've got to do, 
 you know, is to find the man who knows Mr. 
 Bommaney.' 
 
 The commotion which assailed Barter at this 
 speech was like an inward earthquake. 
 
 • 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 contempt- 
 uously. 
 
 1 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 small inner chamber in Hatton 
 Garden, leisurely answering his sole business 
 correspondent of that morning, was in no way 
 surprised when the boy he employed to open the 
 door and receive visitors brought in a card bear- 
 ing the name of ' Mr. John Barter, jun.' 
 
 1 Show him in/ said Mr. Steinberg ; and young 
 Mr. Barter, hearing this in the outer room, came 
 in with a pale-faced and excited alacrity. The 
 diamond merchant dismissed the boy with a 
 word. 
 
 1 "Well/ he said, turning the tip of his cigar 
 upwards by a protrusion of the under lip, ' what 
 is it ? '
 
 186 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 ' About that little matter,' said young Barter 
 nervously, ' we were talking 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 frightened breathless 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 inkstand 
 before him, and tracing a line or two of his 
 correspondent's communication with it, turned to 
 his own unfinished letter. 
 
 Young Barter was already sufficiently agitated, 
 and this curious reception made him more em- 
 barrassed than ever. 
 
 'About that affair of Bommaney's,' he said, 
 feeling as if a rapid wheel had been somehow 
 started in his brain. 
 
 ' Ah ! ' said Steinberg, writing rapidly, and
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 187 
 
 speaking in a voice which seemed to indicate that 
 he neither understood nor cared to understand, 
 1 that affair of Bommaney's, eh ? ' 
 
 This reception was nothing less than dreadful 
 to the young criminal. He had reckoned on 
 having his way made easy for him. Steinberg 
 had actually offered to become his accomplice in 
 crime, and had lured him to disclosure. He 
 could have wished that the floor would open and 
 let him through. He saw that he had already 
 exposed his hand, and began to imagine all 
 manner of consequences resulting from the ex- 
 posure. Not one of the consequences he foresaw 
 promised to be of a nature agreeable to himself, 
 and for the moment the hatred with which Stein- 
 berg inspired him was of so mad a nature that 
 there was nothing he would not have done to him 
 if he had had the courage and the power. 
 
 Steinberg wrote on, shaking his fist in what 
 seemed to be an unusual alert, and even threaten- 
 ing, manner. There was a great deal of unneces-
 
 188 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 sary motion in Steinberg's hand, and Barter, 
 looking at its swift and resolute movements, got 
 a blind sort of impression of strength out of it, 
 and nullified the feeling with which it inspired 
 him. The letter written, enveloped, addressed, 
 and stamped, Steinberg tossed it on one side, and 
 leaning back in his arm-chair, turned an unin- 
 terested look once more upon his visitor. 
 
 1 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, 
 
 1 Come, Steinberg, don't play the fool with a 
 fellow. You know jolly well what it was last 
 night.' 
 
 Mr. Steinberg's keen and impassive face under- 
 went no change. 
 
 1 What did I know last night ? ' he asked. 
 
 1 You know,' Barter began angrily ; and then 
 the hectic flush of courage died, and a dreadful
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 189 
 
 chill of fear succeeded it. What had he known ? 
 He had only guessed — till now. But now, 
 young Mr. Barter felt, to employ the 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, T suppose ? You've come to say some- 
 thing. Why not say it ? ' 
 
 His guest, sitting in a terrible confusion, and 
 feeling himself altogether betrayed and lost, 
 Steinberg marched to the door, and addressing the 
 boy in the outer room, bade him carry the letter 
 to the post and return no more that day. Then, 
 having locked the outer door, he returned 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 sup-
 
 190 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE it 
 
 posed to have run away with. I think — I think, 
 mind you, that if there was any way of using 
 them, I could lay my hands upon them.' 
 
 1 1 remember,' said Steinberg, ' you said some- 
 thing of the kind last night. 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,' re- 
 sponded Steinberg, ' to the man they belong to. 
 They're not worth eight hundred to anybody else.' 
 
 Young Mr. Barter's whole soul seemed to rise 
 in protest against this abominable fallacy. When 
 he had screwed up his courage so far as to induce 
 himself to accept this older and more experienced 
 scoundrel's partnership, he had conceived the 
 possibility of the partner crying out for halves. 
 But that he should want so enormous a share of 
 the spoil was quite intolerable.
 
 II YOUNG ME. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 191 
 
 1 Not worth eight hundred ? ' He could only 
 gasp the questioning protest. 
 
 'If I had 'em to sell/ Steinberg answered 
 calmly, flicking the waste from his cigar by a 
 movement of his little finger, ' I should think 
 eight hundred an uncommon good price for 'em. 
 Later on and sold at second hand they might 
 fetch a thousand. Later on and sold at third 
 hand they might fetch fifteen hundred. One can 
 hardly tell. Of course the value will go on 
 mounting with distance from the original source 
 of danger and with the 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 of diplomacy, 
 which, as he fondly hoped, would answer a double 
 purpose. 
 
 1 She'll never let them go for that, or for any- 
 thing like it.' 
 
 1 She won't, won't she ? ' asked Steinberg, 
 smiling brightly, as if the statement amused him.
 
 192 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 ' Then she'll never let 'em go at all, my friend. 
 How did yon come to find she had 'em ? ' 
 
 I I made a little bit of a discovery,' Barter 
 answered. 
 
 ' Ah ! That was it, was it,' said the elder 
 rascal, falling back into his utter want of interest. 
 1 You'll let me have that hundred.' 
 
 I I will in a day or two,' answered Barter, 
 arrianti. 
 
 'Well, as for a day or two/ returned Stein- 
 berg, rubbing his forehead with 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 been outstanding a goodish time, and to 
 tell you the truth, old man, I want it very badly. 
 If you'll let me have it to-night I shall be obliged 
 to you. I've been hit rather hard this last day 
 or two. Shall we make that a bargain ? To- 
 night ? ' 
 
 ' I — I'm afraid,' Barter stammered, * it's no use 
 talking about to-night.'
 
 n YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 193 
 
 'WeU,' said Steinberg, with a pitiless unin- 
 terested suavity, ■ you know the rules.' 
 
 He drew a little book from his pocket, and 
 tossed it over the table to his guest. 
 
 ' You'll find it on page five. Eule fourteen. 
 It's ticked in red ink, if you'll take the trouble 
 to look at it.' 
 
 Barter opened the book and consulted its 
 pages blindly for a while, and then the mist which 
 seemed to obstruct brain and eyesight clearing 
 away, he read the pages indicated. It set forth 
 the principle that all moneys lost at games of 
 skill or chance, or upon bets made within the 
 limits of the club, were payable within four-and- 
 twenty hours. It set forth further that debts 
 not paid within that time might be brought under 
 the notice of the Committee, who were empowered 
 to act under Eule nine. Eule nine ordained the 
 public posting of the defaulter's name, his sus- 
 pension in default of payment, and, in case of 
 continued obduracy or poverty, his expulsion. 
 
 VOL. I O
 
 194 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 'First and last, Steinberg/ said the wretched 
 criminal, who began to find the way of the trans- 
 gressor unreasonably hard and thorny, ' first and 
 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 to himself. If he had brow- 
 beaten, or blustered, if he had shown anger or 
 impatience, or had been querulous, there might 
 have seemed to exist some slenderest chance for 
 him. But Steinberg was so unmoved that he 
 seemed immovable. 
 
 ' You'd better persuade her/ he said, with a 
 scarcely perceptible grin. Looking at Barter, and 
 observing that he sat with his eyes still bent upon 
 the book of rules, and head dejected, he allowed 
 the grin to broaden. Barter, suddenly looking 
 up at him, saw him smiling like a gargoyle, with 
 a look of infinitely relishing cruelty and cunning.
 
 ir YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 195 
 
 ' 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 
 cry quits, and I wouldn't do that for anybody but 
 a friend.' 
 
 The frank admission of the value of his own 
 friendship was plainly legible in that gargoyle 
 smile, and the unhappy Barter read it clearly. 
 
 Til — I'll see what I can do with her,' he 
 said, with a face and voice of pure misery. 
 
 ' Do, my boy,' said Steinberg, rising, and 
 swinging the key of his chambers upon his fore- 
 finger, ' see what you can do with her. I shan't 
 send 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 what you 
 can do for her.' 
 
 The fraudulent possessor of the notes felt 
 their burthen more than ever insupportable. He 
 rose, and went his way with remorse and rage 
 and the bitterness of baffled stratagem in his
 
 196 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 heart. His wounded mind soared to so lofty a 
 height of egotism in its struggles that he posi- 
 tively found the impudence to curse Bommaney 
 for having dropped the notes in his office. Then 
 he cursed himself for having taken them, and 
 cursed Steinberg for robbing him, and so moved 
 off in a condition quite pitiable to one who could 
 find the understanding and the heart to pity him. 
 
 Steinberg stopped behind, and smoked smil- 
 ingly. He was the successful scoundrel, and 
 found the transaction as sweet as the young Barter 
 found it bitter. 
 
 ' I don't think he'll have much trouble with 
 her,' he said to himself; and he enjoyed that 
 little jest so much that he caught himself smiling 
 at it a hundred times in the course of the after- 
 noon and evening.
 
 VII 
 
 Old Brown, who was one of the sunniest-natured 
 of men, went gloomy when the news of his old 
 friend's dreadful fall came to his ears. It does 
 him no more than justice to say that he mourned 
 Bommaney senior infinitely more than the money. 
 He liked to trust people, and had all his life long 
 been eager to find excuses for defaulters. He 
 could find no excuse here. The theft was bare- 
 faced, insolent, dastardly. He puzzled over it, 
 and grew more cynical and bitter in his thoughts 
 of the world at large than he could have imagined 
 himself. But then, when Bommaney junior 
 came home, and insisted on the restoration of the 
 missing eight thousand from his own small for- 
 tune, old Brown brightened up again. There was
 
 198 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE II 
 
 such a thing as honesty in the world, after all. 
 The restoration warmed his heart anew. At first 
 he fought against it, and would have none of it — 
 the mere candid and honest offer of it was enough 
 for him ; but Philip was more resolute than him- 
 self, and the stronger man won. Phil should 
 never have cause to repent his goodness, the old 
 fellow declared to himself a thousand times. He 
 should reap the proper reward of his own honour. 
 Brown admired and loved Phil out of bounds for 
 this little bit of natural honesty and justice. He 
 thought there had never been a finer fellow in 
 the world, and his heart warmed to him as if he 
 had been a son of his own. As for that rascal 
 of a father — and when he got so far in his 
 thoughts he fumed so with wrath that he dared 
 go no farther, and was compelled, for the sake of 
 his own peace, to banish the friend of his school- 
 days from his mind a thousand times a week. 
 
 It was about a year later than the disgrace of 
 the house of Bommaney that old Brown, to his
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 199 
 
 daughter's perplexity and grief, began to show 
 signs of trouble almost as marked as those he had 
 displayed after his old friend's defection. The 
 old boy's newspaper no longer interested him of 
 a morning. He began to be lax about that morn- 
 ing ride which he had once regarded as being 
 absolutely necessary to the preservation of health 
 in London. He had been impassioned with the 
 theatre, and had become a diligent attendant at 
 first-night performances. Even these ceased to 
 have any joy for him, and he neglected, in fine, 
 all his old sources of amusement. He went 
 about sorrowful and grumpy, expressing the dole- 
 fullest opinions about everything. There was 
 going to be war, stocks were going down, trade 
 was crumbling, there was no virtue in man. 
 
 Patty tried her best to coax him from these 
 pessimistic moods, but the old boy was not to be 
 persuaded. On fine evenings, when there was 
 nothing better to be done, he had loved greatly, 
 between the quiet old-fashioned tea and the quiet
 
 200 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 old-fashioned supper, to dress for out of doors, and 
 with Patty on his arm to wander into Eegent's 
 Park, and there inhale the best imitation of 
 country atmosphere that London could afford. 
 He dropped this amiable and affectionate habit, 
 and took to rambling out alone, coming home 
 late, and haggard, and not infrequently, at such 
 times, staring at his daughter with an aspect so 
 sorrowing and wretched that she knew not what 
 to make of him. 
 
 The girl, watching him with a constantly in- 
 creasing solicitude, could at last endure this con- 
 dition of affairs no longer. He came home one 
 night, leaving neither his stick nor hat in the 
 outer hall, and sat down in the dining-room, 
 muffled and great-coated, the picture of dejection. 
 Patty, kneeling before him, removed his hat, 
 smoothed his hair, and began to unbutton his 
 overcoat. 
 
 ' Papa ! ' she cried suddenly, ' what is the 
 matter with you ? Why are you so changed ? '
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 201 
 
 He breathed a great sigh, and laid his hand 
 upon her head. Then he turned 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 head again. 
 
 ' Is it money, dear ? ' 
 
 'No, no. It. isn't money. Don't talk about 
 it, my dear. Don't talk about it' 
 
 ' 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 say no more about it. We'll 
 be gay and bright again, and we'll hope that 
 things will turn out for the best/ 
 
 The attempt to be gay and bright again re- 
 sulted in most mournful failure, and the girl grew 
 frightened. She had nursed her fears for many 
 days, and had hidden them.
 
 202 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE II 
 
 ' Papa ! ' she said, trembling ever so little, 
 1 you must let me know what it is. Let us bear 
 it together, dear. Whatever it may be it can't 
 matter very much if it leaves us two together — 
 and ' 
 
 1 Ah ! ' said old Brown, looking at her with a 
 pitying smile. 
 
 ' Is it anything ■ ? ' She stopped short, 
 
 and really found no courage to complete the 
 question. 
 
 ' My darling/ he answered, folding her in his 
 arms, and staring sadly over her shoulder. She 
 felt the hands that embraced her quiver, and she 
 knew he had understood her half-expressed query. 
 This frightened her so much that it gave her 
 boldness. 
 
 ' There is something the matter with Phil/ 
 she said, pushing the old man away, 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
 
 ii YOUNG MR. RASTER'S REPENTANCE 203 
 
 was altogether too feeble to deceive her. Philip 
 was the mysterious cause of her father's trouble. 
 Her wandering, pained eyes, her parted lips, the 
 terror and inquiry in her face, frightened the 
 old man. ' No, no,' he cried, c you must not 
 think it too bad. I'm not sure of anything. 
 I don't suppose it's at all a matter of conse- 
 quence. I daresay he's an old fool. I hope 
 lam.' 
 
 These hints and innuendoes were about the 
 last thing in the world to satisfy a girl who had 
 been made anxious about her lover. 
 
 1 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 
 love commonly are. She had, indeed, a native 
 fund of confidence, and her trust in Phil's loyalty 
 had been of the unquestioning sort, quite pro- 
 found and settled. Yet for a moment there rose 
 before her mental vision the dim picture of some 
 possible rival, and at the mere hint of this she
 
 204 YOUNG MR. BARTERS REPENTANCE II 
 
 grew ashamed, and named into indignation against 
 herself. 
 
 ' Tell me/ she said ; ' I insist on knowing.' 
 
 'Well, my dear,' said the old man miser- 
 ably and reluctantly, 'I've been told that his 
 father hastened his own ruin with dice and cards.' 
 It was the first time he had mentioned Bom- 
 maney senior in his daughter's hearing for a 
 year. She looked at him with eyes still intent, 
 but somehow milder and less alarmed. ' Phil,' 
 the old boy continued, 'I'm afraid that Phil is 
 travelling in his father's steps.' 
 
 ' Phil a gambler ! ' she said, with an honest 
 scorn of conviction. ' I know better. 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 to avoid 
 the girl's look, and partly because the motion 
 was a relief to him. ' Gambling-places. Places 
 where men meet for no other earthly purpose
 
 ii YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 20.3 
 
 than to cheat one another. I'm as fond of a 
 rubber at whist as anybody ; but no honest man 
 would put his head into one of those holes of 
 infamy if he knew its character.' 
 
 1 Are you speaking of Phil, papa ? ' she asked. 
 Her voice was low and tremulous, and there was 
 almost a note of threatening in it. The gentlest 
 creature will fight for her own — a fact for which 
 some of us have reason to be grateful. 
 
 'Yes, my dear,' her father answered with a 
 kind of sullen sadness ; ' I'm talking about Phil. 
 He's a member of the vilest crowd of the whole 
 lot, and he's there night after night.' He dashed 
 his overcoat into an arm-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 there night after night. Don't tell me I 
 hadn't the right to watch him. I had the right. 
 My little girl shan't marry a gambler. I won't
 
 206 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 have my fortune wasted by a gambler, and my 
 child's heart broken. I took a room/ he pursued 
 wrathfully, ' opposite the place. I've sat there in 
 the dark with the window open, and caught the 
 
 d worst cold I ever had in my life watching 
 
 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 ; ' the man who 
 has that vice in his blood is lost ! ' 
 
 He was storming loudly, for he was one of 
 those in whom emotion must have expression in 
 noise, but a sudden loud peal at the bell cut short 
 his harangue, and he and Patty stood in silence 
 to know who it might be who called so late. As 
 it happened, it was no other than the lost man 
 himself. He was shown in according to wont 
 and usage without previous announcement, and 
 entered gay and smiling, elate and tender. 
 
 As he looked from one to the other the expres- 
 sion of his face changed. He moved quickly 
 towards Patty, and took her hands in his.
 
 II YOUNG ME. BAETEE S REPENTANCE 207 
 
 ' There's something the matter,' he said gently. 
 ' You're in trouble ! ' 
 
 The old boy glaring at him, growled, '\Ye 
 are/ and snatching up his overcoat, threw it over 
 his arm, and slipped his hat upon his head with a 
 gesture which Philip took for one of defiance. As 
 a matter of fact it expressed no more than wrath- 
 ful grief, but then gesture and expression are hard 
 to read unless you have the key to them. 
 
 ( \Ye'd better have it out, Phil,' said the old 
 man, 'here and now. You've turned gambler, 
 and I've found you out.' 
 
 ' No,' Phil answered, with an odd smile, ' I 
 haven't turned gambler, I assure you. You've 
 heard that I've joined the Pigeon Trap ? That's 
 what they call it in the City. I prefer to call it 
 the Hawks' Roost. There are 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.
 
 208 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 There was an underlying gravity beneath the 
 smile, and for people who had believed in him as 
 devoutly as his two listeners it was hard to dis- 
 believe him now. 
 
 ' You've gone into the infernal hole/ said old 
 Brown, more than half abandoning suspicion, and 
 yet inclined to leave it growlingly, as a dog might 
 surrender a bone he conceived himself to have a 
 right to. ' What do you want there ? ' 
 
 1 1 want to do a very important stroke of busi- 
 ness there, sir,' Philip answered. The smile quite 
 disappeared from his eyes at this moment, and he 
 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 of 
 scoundrels 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's character, 
 and I would go into worse places than the Pigeon 
 Trap if I saw my way to doing that.' 
 
 Patty of course was clinging to him without
 
 ii YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 209 
 
 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. He had never to his 
 knowledge performed this act in the presence of 
 a third person until now, but he got through it 
 without embarrassment. 
 
 1 You think you can clear your father's char- 
 acter ? ' asked his sweetheart'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 eyes gleaming. Nobody had ever 
 looked so handsome to Patty's fancy as he did at 
 that moment. ' I know already that there was 
 no real stain upon his honour, and I'm surprised 
 myself for thinking that there ever could have 
 been, bad as things looked. My father never 
 took wrongful possession of your money. He 
 was robbed of it, and I think I can lay my hand 
 upon the thief 
 
 vol. I p
 
 210 YOUNG MR. BARTER S REPENTANCE n 
 
 There was a prodigious excitement at this 
 declaration, and the young man was overwhelmed 
 with questions. He could name no names, of 
 course, and give no clue, but he sketched the 
 story. He contented himself by describing young 
 Barter as Thief Number One, and he was satis- 
 fied to describe Steinberg as Probable Thief 
 Number Two. He had learned, it appeared, that 
 Thief Number One had succeeded on his father's 
 death to a carefully limited partnership in a 
 business affair in the city. The guiding spirit in 
 the concerns of Thief Number One had been his 
 father's managing 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 countless extravagances, and 
 was a reckless gambler. Within the last twelve 
 months he 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,
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 211 
 
 and it was in his offices that the roll of bank-notes 
 had been lost. As for Probable Thief Number 
 Two, he played rook to Xuniber One's pigeon. 
 He had a visible hold upon him ; Xurnber One 
 trembled before him, and did what he was bidden 
 to do. Xurnber Two had plenty of money, and 
 as shady a reputation as any man in London 
 who was not among the known criminal classes. 
 Phil's belief was that Xurnber Two was disposing 
 of the notes for Xurnber One, and that this 
 simple fact accounted for his power over him. 
 
 ' And I'm going to follow their track,' said 
 Phil, tapping the clenched knuckles of his right 
 hand upon the open palm of his left with a quiet 
 vehemence, ' until I find out everything, if I 
 follow it until I am gray.'
 
 VIII 
 
 It would appear that a spider may be among 
 the most daring, skilful, and predatory of his 
 species, that he may be gifted with the most con- 
 stant watchfulness and appetite, and yet, whether 
 by the intrusion of an accidental walking-stick 
 or broom (which would assuredly seem providen- 
 tial to the fly), or by stress of weather, or the 
 desperate activity of a victim, may have his best 
 laid schemes brought to nought, and his most 
 mathematically laid web rent to tatters. In the 
 entomological world a solitary interview between 
 fly and spider is usually fatal to the one, and 
 satisfactory to the other. But we of the higher 
 developments, who model ourselves, or are 
 modelled, upon the lines of myriads of remote
 
 ii YOUNG ME. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 213 
 
 ancestors, and far-away relatives, have refined 
 upon their primitive proceedings, and have made 
 their simple activities complex by development. 
 
 In an absolutely primitive condition the 
 Steinberg spider would have drained the Barter 
 fly at a single orgie, and would have left him to 
 wither on the lines. As things were, he came back 
 to him with a constant gusto of appetite, tasting 
 him on Monday, despatching him to buzz among 
 his fellows until Saturday, and then tasting him 
 again, the Barter fly seeming for a while — for 
 quite a considerable time in fact — lusty and 
 active and able-bodied, and looking as though 
 this kind of thing might go on for ever without 
 much damage to him, and the spider himself 
 giving no sign of overtaxed digestive powers. 
 
 Not to run this striking and original simile 
 out of breath, the Barter fly endured for a round 
 twelve months, without showing signs of anaemia 
 so pronounced as to look dangerous to his consti- 
 tution. At the end of that time, however, all
 
 214 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 the surplus blood had been drawn from his body, 
 and the spider had grown so keen by the habit 
 of constant recurrence to him that any prolonged 
 connection between them began to look desperate. 
 In plain English, the eight thousand pounds 
 which had once so lightly passed from the hands 
 of Mr. Brown to the hands of Mr. Bommaney 
 had now passed, with just as little profit to the 
 man who parted with them, from the hands of 
 young Barter to the hands of Steinberg. 
 
 It was just about the time when this linger- 
 ing but inevitable transaction was completed that 
 chance led young Barter to his encounter with 
 the son of the man whose belongings he had 
 appropriated. Everybody knows how apt newly- 
 made acquaintances sometimes are to renew them- 
 selves again and again. You meet a man whom 
 you have never seen before, see him just long 
 enough to take a passing interest in him, and to 
 know generally who and what he is, and you run 
 against him on the morrow, and again on the
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 215 
 
 morrow, and so on, until in a week he has grown 
 as familiar to your thoughts as any other mere 
 acquaintance of whose identity you may have 
 been aware for years. This happened in the 
 case of Philip Bommaney and young Mr. Barter. 
 They entered the Inn together, or left it together, 
 or Philip ran upstairs or downstairs as Barter 
 was in the very act of leaving or entering his 
 chambers. Putting together a certain family 
 resemblance which he thought he noticed, the 
 identity of a rather uncommon name, and the 
 curious frequency of these chance encounters, 
 Barter found it hard to avoid the belief that his 
 new-made acquaintance had a rather careful eye 
 upon him. His nerve was a good deal shaken, 
 and he was by no means the man he had been. 
 To the unobservant stranger the frank gaiety of 
 his laugh was as spontaneous as ever, but then 
 that had never had much to do with Barter's 
 inward sensations. Perhaps he got the laugh 
 in some remote fashion from an ancestor who
 
 216 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 really ought to have had it, and who may have 
 been as dull and as little laughter-loving to look 
 at as his successor was within. Philip rather 
 took to the fellow at first sight, and was slow to 
 suspect him, even when James Hornett had told 
 his story. But the young Barter was not satis- 
 tied, as he should have been, with playing the 
 part of one insect at a time. It was unwhole- 
 some enough, one might have thought, for him to 
 play fly to Steinberg's spider, and yet he must 
 needs take to playing moth to Philip Bommaney's 
 candle, a light of danger to him, as he recognised 
 almost from the first. He was always polite to 
 Phil, and always stopped him for a moment's 
 conversation at their chance encounters. Phil, 
 having been inspired at least with a suspicion 
 that this engaging young man was responsible for 
 the actual disgrace which had fallen upon Bom- 
 maney senior, always bent a grave scrutiny upon 
 him. Barter sometimes wondered whether his 
 new-found acquaintance's way of looking at him
 
 ir YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 217 
 
 were habitual or particular, but he could never 
 solve that problem. To Barter's nerves the glance 
 of dispassionate analysis always seemed to ask — 
 Did you steal those notes ? and whether his mind 
 and nerves were at accord or no made but little 
 difference to him. His mind rejected the idea 
 of suspicion, but his nerves accepted it with 
 trembling. He knew perfectly well that he 
 could not endure the certainty of Phil Bom- 
 maney's knowledge, but none the less he found 
 the uncertainty tantalising and painful. This is 
 perhaps one of the hardest things an undetected 
 criminal has to endure, that he lives in a world 
 of suspicion of his own making, where every 
 imagination is real and as dreadful as the 
 fact. In his own mind young Barter credited 
 himself with courage when he made overtures for 
 Philip's companionship. 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
 
 218 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 young man, and was not altogether displeased 
 that he found the opportunity thrust upon him. 
 Almost facing the gateway of the old Inn there 
 is an old-fashioned restaurant, deserted from its 
 hour of opening until noon, and from then 
 crowded inconveniently till two o'clock, deserted 
 again till five, and once more inconveniently 
 crowded till seven. Philip, having the power to 
 choose his own time for meals, and frequenting 
 this old house, sometimes met Barter in the act 
 of coming away from it with the dregs of the 
 stream of the late lunchers or diners. He fell 
 into the habit of going a little earlier, and Barter 
 would signal him to the table at which he sat, if 
 by rare chance there happened to be a vacant 
 seat at it. The young rascal's tendency lay 
 towards monologue, and since it was his cue to 
 be open-hearted, and very unsuspicious of being 
 suspected, he talked with much freedom of him- 
 self, his pursuits, and his affairs. The question 
 which Barter's nerves were always finding in
 
 ii YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 219 
 
 Philip's eyes was, as a matter of fact, not often 
 absent from his mind. ' Now, how did you steal 
 those notes ? ' was the one active query of his 
 intelligence as he listened to Barter's candid 
 prattle. 
 
 It was in the course of these confidences that 
 Philip learned of the existence of that Pigeon 
 Trap of which Mr. Barter was so proud to be an 
 inhabitant. It was at Barter's solicitation that 
 he visited the place, and it was Barter who pro- 
 posed him as a member. Being a member it was 
 not long before he discovered the fact of Stein- 
 berg's influence over the young solicitor. He 
 noticed a terrified deference in Barter's manner 
 towards the other, a frightened alacrity of obed- 
 ience to his suggestions. He noticed also that 
 Steinberg and Barter played a good deal by them- 
 selves, and that Barter always lost. 
 
 The men of Hawks' Boost talked pretty freely 
 about each other in the absence of such of their 
 fellow clubmen as were under discussion. Barter
 
 220 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 Was 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, and 
 the wonder was where Barter got his money. 
 There was a pretty general apprehension that the 
 young man, at no very far future date, would 
 come to grief. The contemplation of this prob- 
 ability affected the Eoosters but little in an 
 emotional way, but it made them keen to see that 
 Mr. Barter paid up punctually, and though they 
 were very shy of paper acceptances from their 
 comrades as a general thing, they were shyer of 
 his than of most men's. 
 
 These things Philip Bommaney junior atten- 
 tively noted. At first the clubmen rather won- 
 dered at him. He was in their precincts often, 
 and would smoke his pipe and watch whatever 
 game might be going with tranquil interest, but 
 he never played, and could not be induced to bet. 
 Que diable faisant-il dans cette gatire ? the club- 
 men wanted to know. He never told them, and
 
 rr YOUNG ME. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 221 
 
 in a while they grew accustomed to him and his 
 ways. He continued his quiet watch upon Mr. 
 Barter, and included Steinberg in his field of 
 observation. One evening, dining at the old 
 restaurant, he marked Barter, melancholy and 
 alone. He was sitting in an attitude of apparent 
 dejection, tapping upon the table with a fork, and 
 deep sunk in what seemed to be an uncomfortable 
 contemplation. But when the moth saw his 
 candle he brightened, and fluttered over to it, 
 
 'You might come over,' said Barter, when 
 they had sat together until the latest of the 
 dining guests had gone away. ' You might come 
 over to my chambers and smoke a cigar if you've 
 nothing else to do. I don't care about going 
 down to the club to-night.' 
 
 The Steinberg spider was supposed to be wait- 
 ing there, coldly patient and insatiable, and 
 Barter dreaded him. Philip had never entered 
 the rooms, but they had an attraction for him. 
 He accepted his companion's invitation, and they
 
 222 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE ri 
 
 entered the chambers together. A fire lingered 
 in the grate, and Barter replenished it, and, 
 having produced a box of cigars and a bottle of 
 cognac, proffered refreshment to his guest. The 
 honest man began somewhat to recoil from him- 
 self and from his companion. What was he 
 there for ? The answer was pretty evident. 
 There was nothing between this loud -babbling 
 youth and himself which could have drawn them 
 into even a momentary comradeship, if it had not 
 been for the suspicion his father's story had in- 
 spired in him. Frankly, he was there because 
 he suspected the man, because he desired to watch 
 him, because, if he found the chance, he was will- 
 ing to set him in the dock. To smoke his 
 tobacco and drink his liquor in those circumstances 
 had undoubtedly an air of treachery. In a while 
 he hardened himself, and closed his ears to all 
 casuist pleadings, whether for or against the course 
 he had adopted. He would clear his father if he 
 could, and if there were any mere hope of doing
 
 ii YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPEXTAXCE 223 
 
 it, he would watch this fellow as a cat watches a 
 mouse, and would go on doing it until both of 
 them were gray. 
 
 1 By the way/ said Barter innocently, ' do you 
 never take a hand at ' 
 
 His supple fingers supplied the hiatus, deal- 
 ing out an imaginary pack of cards with the 
 flourishing dexterity native to them. 
 
 1 That's what I'm here for, is it ? ' thought 
 Philip in his own mind. ' We shall see.' He 
 said aloud, ' Sometimes,' in an indifferent tone. 
 
 1 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 the business safe. 
 
 They fixed upon the points and they began to 
 play. The points were not those for which Mr. 
 Barter really cared to play ; for he was one of 
 those people who find no joy in cards unless thev
 
 224 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 risk more than they can afford to lose. But 
 little fish are sweet, and he thought he had 
 secured a greenhorn. As it happened, the green- 
 horn, though he was but eight-and-twenty, had 
 travelled the world all over, and had found himself 
 compelled to survey mankind from China to Peru. 
 He was, moreover, one of those men who like to 
 know things, and those quietly-observant eyes of 
 his had taken note of the proceedings of a hun- 
 dred scoundrels in whose hands the redoubtable 
 Steinberg himself would have had but poor 
 chances. The Greek had been Philip's standing 
 joy, the dish best spiced to suit his intellectual 
 palate. He had delighted over him aboard ship, 
 on the monstrous dreary railway journey between 
 Atlantic and Pacific, in the little towns which 
 form the centre of scores of Texan ranches, in 
 hells at the Cape and in California, in the free 
 ports of China, and on the borders of the Bos- 
 phorus. In point of fact he was by experience 
 as little fitted to be played upon by a gentleman
 
 II YOUNG MPu BARTER'S REPENTANCE 225 
 
 of young Mr. Barter's limited accomplishments as 
 almost any man alive. 
 
 Phil's interest in the game had grown grimly 
 observant in the first ten minutes. Young Mr. 
 Barter had a knack, when he shuffled the cards, 
 of slyly inclining the painted sides upwards. He 
 had another knack of leaving an honour at the 
 bottom. He made a false cut with fair dexterity 
 for an amateur. He could, when occasion seemed 
 to make it profitable, discard with a fair air of 
 unconsciousness. An ace dropped out of sight 
 a 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. Then he 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 new deal. All this 
 Philip Bommaney watched with a complete seem- 
 ing innocence and good temper. He lost his six- 
 
 VOL. I Q
 
 226 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE II 
 
 pences handsomely, made no protest, and looked 
 unruffled. 
 
 1 You play false for sixpences, do you ? ' he 
 said inwardly. c I suppose a scoundrel is a 
 scoundrel all through, and that if you'll sell your 
 soul for so little, you could hardly object to driv- 
 ing a bargain for a larger sum.' 
 
 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. 
 Surveying his companion with that placid inquiry 
 which Barter felt to be so excessively uncomfort- 
 able, he came to have but a poor opinion of his 
 courage. He was one of those men who, even 
 without knowing it, take profound observations 
 of their fellow-creatures. The true observer of 
 human nature is by no means a personage who is 
 always on the strain after insight into character. 
 He is, on the contrary, pretty generally an inward- 
 looking man, who seems to notice little, and takes 
 in his surroundings as the immortal Joey Ladle
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER S REPENTANCE 227 
 
 did his wine. Philip judged Barter to be a 
 nervous man, and supposed him, even when 
 strung to his bent, to have no great tenacity or 
 continuance of courage. He had learned more 
 and more to believe his father's story, though he 
 had perhaps too carefully guarded himself from 
 his own eager desire to accept it. Barter's every 
 action with the cards offered confirmation of the 
 belief that he had taken possession of the lost 
 notes. He was certainly a petty rascal, and 
 there was obviously nothing but opportunity 
 needed to make him bloom into a rascal on a 
 larger scale. So the temptation to drop the cards 
 upon the table, to look his companion in 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 strenuously 
 resisted. It seemed worth while to resist it. To 
 begin with, if young Barter should be innocent, 
 the querist could evidently expect nothing else 
 than to be taken for a madman. To continue, if
 
 228 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE N 
 
 his name and the likeness to his father had 
 already set the thief upon his guard, and had pre- 
 pared him for accusation, the question would only 
 reveal his own suspicion, and thereby weaken the 
 chances of discovery. 
 
 Philip combated his inward desire, but could 
 not quell it. There seemed a kind of intuition 
 in it, a lurking certainty lay hidden behind all 
 the doubts he saw, and pushed him forward. 
 
 By and by young Mr. Barter tripped on the 
 false cut, which he had hitherto executed with a 
 fair amateur dexterity. 
 
 'Excuse me,' said Phil, as he gathered the 
 spilt cards together. 'You should make the 
 three separate motions look like one. Do the 
 trick so.' 
 
 He performed the trick slowly, looking Barter 
 in the face, and then went through it swiftly. 
 
 ' That is how the thing ought to be done, Mr. 
 Barter,' he said, with a placidity which his com- 
 panion found singularly disquieting.
 
 II YOUNG MR BARTER'S REPENTANCE 229 
 
 And now, that same unhappy want of self- 
 command which had given Steinberg so clear an 
 insight into his young friend's mind, fell once 
 more upon Barter. He tried to look wondering, 
 he tried to laugh. The result of that frightened 
 contortion of the features was nothing less than 
 ghastly. Unhappily for himself he knew it, and 
 so he grew ghastlier yet, 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 ? ' Philip inquired suavely. 
 
 1 How dare you talk to me like that ? ' the 
 detected rascal stammered. ' You come 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 the face, and seeing 
 there a very marked and readable prophecy of 
 unpleasant things, he backed, and in the act of 
 doing so, tripped, and fell into a chair. The in- 
 tention in Phil's mind became simply unconquer-
 
 230 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 able. He cast rapidly about him for an instant, 
 saw all the consequences of failure which might 
 follow if he denounced the trembling wretch at 
 once, and set him on his guard. And yet he 
 could not help doing what he did, and could not 
 restrain the words which rose to his lips. He 
 took Barter by the collar, and lifted him to his 
 feet with an unsuspected strength, and put the 
 question to him quietly. 
 
 'How many of those stolen notes has Stein- 
 berg changed for you ? ' 
 
 It was a bold thing to do, it was perhaps a 
 foolish thing to do, and yet it was the game. 
 Barter stared at him speechlessly. His lips 
 moved, but he said nothing. Then his jaw fell 
 as a dead man's jaw falls, and being released 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 since the 
 second day of our acquaintance.'
 
 j I YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 231 
 
 Barter groaned, with a tremulous and hollow 
 sound, but made no other answer. 
 
 ' 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 he could by this time have 
 answered if he would. But he knew that his 
 own cowardice, if nothing else, had given away 
 the game. After such a confession as his own 
 teiTor had made, what was the use of bluster or 
 pretence ? He could not guess how much was 
 known. He was completely cornered, and must 
 fight or yield. His native instinct at any 
 moment was ready to teach him how much dis- 
 cretion was the better part of valour, and now to 
 fight seemed mere madness. In the very terror 
 of the night which thus suddenly enveloped him 
 he saw one gleam of hope. There was one stroke 
 to be made which might save him, in part at 
 least, from the consequences of his own mis- 
 deed.
 
 232 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 Philip gave these reflections but little time to 
 grow distinct to Barter's mind. 
 
 ' How many of those notes ? ' he asked slowly, 
 emphasising almost every word by a tap of his 
 knuckles upon the table, ' have passed into Stein- 
 berg's hands ? ' 
 
 ' All,' gasped Barter ; ' every one of them ! ' 
 
 ' That will do for the present,' said Philip, and 
 at that instant there came a loud summons at the 
 door, whereat the miserable Barter started, and 
 clasped his hands in renewed terror. He fancied 
 an officer of justice there, his arrival accurately 
 timed. 
 
 Philip, throwing a glance about the room, and 
 assuring himself that there was no means of un- 
 observed exit, answered the summons in person. 
 He had until that moment kept perfect posses- 
 sion of himself except for his obedience to that 
 overmastering intuition, but beholding Mr. Stein- 
 berg at the doorway he felt a great leap at his 
 heart, and a sudden dryness in his throat. He
 
 ii YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 233 
 
 examined these phenomena afterwards, and 
 decided in his own mind that they were assign- 
 able to fear. He came to the belief which he 
 cherishes until now, that he had to screw up his 
 courage pretty tightly before he could face the 
 idea of confronting the partners in rascality to- 
 gether. But here it may be observed in passing 
 that this kind of self-depreciation is a favourite 
 trick with men of unusual nerve, and is rarely 
 resorted to by any but the most courageous. 
 
 Steinberg recognised him by the light of the 
 gas-lamp. 
 
 1 Good-evening/ he said, nodding. ' Barter's 
 here, I suppose.' 
 
 1 Sir,' said Phil, with recovered coolness, a cer- 
 tain light of humour dawning in his mind, 'Mr. 
 Barter is within, and I have no doubt will be 
 very happy to see yon.' 
 
 Steinberg cast a sidelong glance at him, and 
 entered. Phil closed the door, and followed close 
 upon his heels. Barter, with his pale complexion
 
 234 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE II 
 
 fallen to the tint of dead ashes, sat huddled in 
 the arm-chair, staring white-eyed like a frightened 
 madman. Steinberg stared back 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's this mean ? ' He measured 
 Philip with his eye — a very evil and wicked 
 eye it was — and dropped back a step or two. 
 
 ' What's this mean ? ' Steinberg asked again, 
 his quick glance darting from one to the other. 
 
 ' It means, sir,' said Phil, with a glad tran- 
 quillity, 'that your fellow -scoundrel, the cour- 
 ageous gentleman in the arm-chair there, is in 
 the act of making his confession.' 
 
 Steinberg sent one savage glance at Barter, and 
 then dashed at him, and planting both hands within 
 the collar of his shirt, so banged him to and fro that 
 he would inevitably have done him a mischief of 
 a serious sort but for Phil's intervention. The 
 method of intervention was less tranquil than
 
 II YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 235 
 
 Philip's motion up to this time had been. He 
 tore Steinberg from his grip of the betrayer with 
 a force he had no time to measure, and hurled 
 him across the room. He staggered at the door, 
 and his head coming noisily in contact with it, 
 he slipped down into a sitting posture with an 
 expression suddenly changed from ferocity to a 
 complete vacuity and indifference. 
 
 Now Mr. Barter, scared as he had been, and 
 shaken to his centre, had begun to think again, 
 and when he saw that Steinberg's chance in the 
 enemy's hands was less than nothing, that fact 
 formed as it were the last necessary plank for the 
 raft of safety he desired to construct. He got 
 up from his place, animated by this great idea, 
 and staggering to the helpless Steinberg, fell 
 down beside him and gripped his hands. 
 
 ' Tie him, Mr. Bommaney, tie him 1 ' gurgled 
 Barter. ■ He's been the ruin of me, curse him. 
 I should have been an honest man if it hadn't 
 been for him. It's him that led me into it, and
 
 236 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE II 
 
 he's had every sixpence of the money. 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 un- 
 expected quarter, and whencesoever good advice 
 may come it is worth while to follow it. Phil 
 took 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 sincerest penitence, ' to bleed me 
 again. He's got my I.O.U. for £82 he cheated 
 me of last week. He's had every penny of 
 the money. I haven't had so much as a single 
 farthing of it myself. I'll swear I haven't.' 
 
 1 That's your lay, is it ? ' said Steinberg, whose 
 scattered wits were coming back to him. ' You 
 shall answer for this violence in the proper quarter, 
 Bommaney.' 
 
 ' I will answer for it in the proper quarter,'
 
 II YOUNG ME. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 237 
 
 Phil replied. ' I will trouble you, Mr. Steinberg, 
 to come to the proper quarter now.' 
 
 1 You won't forget,' said Barter, ' that I helped 
 to capture him. You'll speak a word for me, 
 Mr. Bornmaney ? I've been that villain's victim 
 all along. I should never have gone wrong if it 
 hadn't been for him, and I've wanted to send the 
 money back over and over again, but he got it 
 into his own hands and wouldn't listen to it, and 
 after all I never took the money, Mr. Bommaney 
 — I only found it. It was Steinberg kept it. 
 He said I should be a fool to let it go.' 
 
 AYhat sentiments of contempt and rage in- 
 spired Mr. Steinberg's bosom at this juncture 
 must be imagined. He looked them all, but 
 verbally expressed none of them. 
 
 1 Get up,' said Phil, addressing him. Stein- 
 berg obeyed. ' Take a seat in that corner.' 
 Steinberg obeyed again. ' Now you — ' to Barter, 
 ' take a place in that corner, behind the desk.' 
 
 ' With pleasure, Mr. Bommaney,' said Barter,
 
 238 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE n 
 
 ' with the very greatest willingness. I desire to 
 make no resistance to the law. I helped to 
 capture the criminal. Please remember that, 
 Mr. Bommaney. Pray remember that.' 
 
 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 alone 
 together, he showed it shakily to Steinberg, as a 
 hint that he was not without means of protec- 
 tion 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 
 sounding elate, triumphant, and threatening to 
 their ears as he went along the boarded floor. 
 They listened as the footstep crossed the square 
 boulders of the courtyard, and listened still until 
 their sound melted into the blended noises of the 
 outer street. A minute later the step was 
 heard returning, accompanied by another, solid 
 and terrible. They knew it, and their hearts,
 
 II YOUNG MB. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 239 
 
 low as they were already, sank at it. The door 
 opened and Phil reappeared, followed by a 
 policeman. 
 
 1 1 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 of 
 eight thousand pounds, the property of my father, 
 Mr. Philip Bommaney, of Coalporter's Alley.' 
 
 ' I'm quite willing to go without resistance/ 
 said Mr. Barter from behind the table. ' I assisted 
 in the capture, and I am ready to say anything.' 
 
 1 That's the first true word you've spoken/ 
 Steinberg snarled. c You can take this thing off/ 
 holding out his hands. ' I'll go quietly. I can 
 get bail in an hour.' 
 
 ' Don't have it taken off, Mr. Bommaney, not 
 if we're to travel in the same vehicle. He 
 threatened me while you were away. He said if 
 they gave 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
 
 240 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE ir 
 
 made a clean breast of it, officer. I'm ready to 
 — tell everything. He's ruined me, and now he 
 says he'll kill me because I'm ready to make a 
 clean breast of it.' 
 
 ' I choose to be taken separately, if you please. 
 I myself will pay the fare. I won't travel with 
 that cackling idiot.' 
 
 ' I will go with Mr. Bommaney with pleasure,' 
 said the penitent. ' I'll go with you with pleasure 
 anywhere. I'd rather go with you a great deal.' 
 
 It Twas hardly to be expected that Philip 
 should feel very warmly towards either of his 
 two companions, but of the two he misliked 
 Steinberg the less. And, since it seemed humane 
 and reasonable to choose, he chose Steinberg as 
 his travelling companion. The officer set Stein- 
 berg's hat upon his head, and the quartet set out. 
 The sight of a man with his hands tightly bound 
 with a scarlet muffler gathered a momentary 
 little crowd at the Inn gate ; but, a pair of han- 
 soms being summoned, captives and captors were
 
 ii YOUNG MR BARTER'S REPENTANCE 241 
 
 speedily relieved from vulgar observation. The 
 station reached, it turned out that the communi- 
 cative Mr. Barter, in the exuberance of his heart, 
 had exposed to the officer 091 route the where- 
 abouts of the lost notes. He declared that to his 
 knowledge they rested in a safe, the position of 
 which he indicated, in Steinberg's Hatton Garden 
 office. The Inspector before whom the charge 
 was made deemed this intelligence worthy of 
 being acted on at once. The two prisoners were 
 searched, and Mr. Barter was so good as to point 
 out, among Steinberg's keys, those which were 
 necessary for the purposes of investigation. He 
 even went so far as to offer his assistance as 
 guide ; but this was declined with a chilliness 
 singularly at variance with the solicitous warmth 
 of the proposal. 
 
 ' I think, sir/ said the Inspector, with an 
 arctic disrespect which was so frozen as to be 
 almost respectful, ' that we can manage this 
 without your assistance.' 
 
 vol. 1 R
 
 242 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE II 
 
 The Divisional Superintendent, being com- 
 municated with by telephone, arrived upon the 
 scene. The matter in hand having been laid 
 before him with curt official brevity, he asked for 
 the keys, called to himself a constable, and was 
 preparing to set out, when Philip begged permis- 
 sion to accompany him. 
 
 ' The notes, sir,' he said, ' were left in my 
 father's trust by a dear old friend of his. My 
 father himself was supposed to have made use of 
 them — a thing of which he was incapable. If I 
 can take to him the news that they are found, I 
 can lift a load of undeserved disgrace from the 
 mind of an honourable man.' 
 
 ' I shall be pleased to have your company, 
 Mr. Bommaney,' the Superintendent answered, 
 touched a little by the young man's earnestness. 
 So the three got into a four-wheeler, and bowled 
 away to Hatton Garden, and there made entry 
 into the chambers lately occupied by Mr. Stein- 
 berg. There was no gas here, but the constable's
 
 II YOUXG ME. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 243 
 
 dark lantern showed the way. It revealed the 
 safe in the position the communicative criminal 
 had assigned to it. It revealed the notes, snugly 
 spread out in one crisp little heap, and arranged 
 with business-like precision in the order of their 
 numbers. 
 
 This golden spectacle once seen, Phil dashed into 
 the street, hailed a hansom, and drove pell-mell, 
 exciting the cabman who conducted him by the 
 promise of a double fare, to the residence of old 
 Brown and old Brown's daughter. There he told 
 the glorious news, a little broken and halting in 
 his speech. Patty threw her arms about him, 
 and cried without concealment or restraint. Old 
 Brown blew his nose with a suspicious frequency, 
 and shook his adopted son-in-law by the hand 
 at frequent intervals. 
 
 1 Phil/ he cried at last, ' where's your father ? 
 By God, sir, he never had any need to run away 
 from me, because he happened to lose a handful 
 of paltry money. "What had he got to do but
 
 244 YOUNG MR. BARTER S REPENTANCE II 
 
 come and say, " Brown, it's gone ! " He hadn't 
 trust enough in me to think I'd believe him. 
 Let's get at 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 him to get the horses to, and 
 bring the carriage round at once. Where's your 
 father, Phil ? ' 
 
 ' He's down Poplar way,' said Phil. ' Hornett, 
 his old clerk, is living in the same house with 
 him.' 
 
 ' We'll go down, and rouse him up,' the old 
 boy said, with a moist eye and trembling hand. 
 ' Phil, my lad,' he went on, grasping the young 
 fellow's hand in his own, ' I'm getting to be an 
 old 'un. You wouldn't think it to look at me, 
 because, thank God, I've always known how to 
 take my trouble lightly, but I've seen a lot of it 
 in my time, and you can take my word for this 
 — there isn't any trouble in the world that's
 
 ii YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 245 
 
 hardly so. bitter as for an honest man to have to 
 take another for a rogue.' 
 
 So it came to pass that Bommaney senior, 
 who after all, perhaps, hardly deserved to be 
 made a hero of, was plenteously bedewed with 
 the tears of three most honourable and high- 
 minded people, and was set up in their minds as 
 a sort of live statue of undeserved martyrdom. 
 They who learned the tale afterwards mourned 
 his weakness, and supposed him to be the victim 
 of a too sensitive organisation. He lives now 
 with a genuine halo of sanctity about him, and 
 seems in the minds of some to have suffered for 
 the sake of a great principle, quite noble, but not 
 quite definitely denned. 
 
 Odd things happen every clay in the world, 
 and pass by unregarded. The worship of 
 Bommaney senior's sensibilities seems a trifle 
 dull when all things are considered, though one 
 has to be glad that an honest son can think of 
 him with pity mixed with admiration. But
 
 246 YOUNG MR. BARTER'S REPENTANCE II 
 
 perhaps the oddest thing of all in connection 
 with this story may be looked for in the shorthand 
 reporter's notes of the Eecorder's speech at the 
 Old Bailey, when the accusation against Messrs. 
 Barter and Steinberg came to be heard. 
 
 ' You, Barter,' said the learned Eecorder, 
 ' appear to have been drawn into this by the 
 influence of an intelligence stronger and abler 
 than your own. You appear, in a moment of 
 weakness, to have been led away by that stronger 
 intelligence from the paths of rectitude. But 
 you have displayed so clear a sense of the 
 enormity of your conduct, and have, by your 
 complete disclosures of the crime committed by 
 you and your companion, and, by your evidence 
 in Court to-day, shown so complete a repentance 
 for it, that I do not think that it would be politic 
 or just to lay a severe term of imprisonment upon 
 you. Nevertheless, the law of the land must be 
 justified, and I feel a pleasure in believing that 
 in justifying the law I am affording you an
 
 ii YOUNG MB. BARTER'S REPENTANCE 247 
 
 opportunity for reflection, for the formation of 
 good resolutions for the future, and for a confirm- 
 ation of those better desires which I believe — 
 in spite of your association with this criminal 
 enterprise — to animate your mind.' 
 
 Now, to my fancy, this has a distinct element 
 of comedy in it ; but the learned Recorder 
 resembled some of his unlearned brethren, in 
 respect to the fact that he could not be expected 
 to know everything. 
 
 Mr. Barter thrives again, but he is even now 
 awaiting, with the uneasiest sensations, the liber- 
 ation of the man who betrayed him into crime. 
 
 END OF VOL. I 
 
 Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh
 
 <y
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
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