repertory. Your honoured father shall not blame me for sellin' you a
swearer."

The boy pointed to a cage on the man's right.

"A canary? . . . Well, and you're right.  What is talk, after all, to
compare with music?  And chosen the best bird of my stock, you have; the
pick of the whole crop.  That's Quality, my friends; nothing but the
best'll do for Quality, an' the instinct of it comes out young."
The man, who was evidently an eccentric, ran his eye roguishly over the
faces behind the boy and named his price; a high one--a very high one--
but one nicely calculated to lie on the right side of public
reprobation.

Dicky laid his guinea on the sill.  "I want a whistle, too," he said,
"and my change, please."

The bird-fancier slapped his breeches pockets.

"A guinea?  Bless me, but I must run around and ask one of my neighbours
to oblige.  Any of you got the change for a golden guinea about you?" he
asked of the crowd.

"We ain't so lucky," said a voice somewhere at the back.  "We don't
carry guineas about, nor give 'em to our bastards."

A voice or two--a woman's among them--called "Shame!"  "Hold your
tongue, there!"

Dicky had his back to the speaker.  He heard the word for the first time
in his life, and had no notion of its meaning; but in a dim way he felt
it to be an evil word, and also that the people were protesting out of
pity.  A rush of blood came to his face.  He gulped, lifted his chin,
and said, with his eyes steady on the face of the blinking fancier,--

"Give it back to me, please, and I will get it changed."

He took the coin, and walked away resolutely with a set white face.
He saw none of the people who made way for him.

The bird-fancier stared after the small figure as it walked away into
darkness.  "Bastard?" he said. "There's Blood in that youngster, though
he don't face ye again an' I lose my deal.  Blood's blood, however ye
come by it; you may take that on the word of a breeder.  An' you ought
to be ashamed, Sam Wilson--slingin' yer mud at a child!"


The word drummed in the boy's ears.  What did it mean?  What was the
sneer in it?  "Brat!" "cry-baby," "tell-tale," "story-teller," these
were opprobrious words, to be resented in their degree; and all but the
first covered accusations which not only must never be deserved, but
obliged a gentleman, however young, to show fight.  But "bastard"?

He felt that, whatever it meant, somehow it was worse than any; that
honour called for the annihilation of the man that dared speak it; that
there was weakness, perhaps even poltroonery, in merely walking away.
If only he knew what the word meant!

He came to a halt opposite the drug store.  He had once heard Dr.
Lamerton, the apothecary at home, described as a "well-to-do" man.
The phrase stuck in his small brain, and he connected the sale of drugs
with wealth.  (How, he reasoned, could any one be tempted to sell wares
so nasty unless by prodigious profit?)  He felt sure the drug-seller
would be able to change the guinea for him, and walked in boldly.
His ears were tingling, and he felt a call to assert himself.

There was a single customer in the store--a girl.  With some surprise he
recognised her for the girl who had beaten the flame out of the curtain.

She stood with her back to the doorway and a little sidewise by the
counter, from behind which the drug-seller--a burly fellow in a suit of
black--looked down on her doubtfully, rubbing his shaven chin while he
glanced from her to something he held in his open palm.

"I'm askin' you," he said, "how you came by it?"

"It was given to me," the girl answered.

"That's a likely tale!  Folks don't give money like this to a girl in
your position; unless--"

Here the man paused.

"Is it a great deal of money?" she asked.  There was astonishment in her
voice, and a kind of suppressed eagerness.

"Oh, come now--that's too innocent by half!  A guinea-piece is a
guinea-piece, and a guinea is twenty-one shillings; and twenty-one
shillings, likely enough, is more'n you'll earn in a year outside o'
your keep.  Who gave it ye?"

"A gentleman--the Collector--at the Inn just now.

"Ho!" said the drug-seller, with a world of meaning.

"But if," she went on, "it is worth so much as you say, there must be
some mistake.  Give it back to me, please.  I am sorry for troubling
you."  She took a small, round parcel from her pocket, laid it on the
counter, and held out her hand for the coin.

The drug-seller eyed her.  "There must be some mistake, I guess," said
he, as he gave back the gold piece.  "No, and you can take up your
packet too; I don't grudge two-pennyworth of salve.  But wait a moment
while I serve this small customer, for I want a word with you
later. . . . Well, and what can I do for you, young gentleman?" he
asked, turning to Dicky.

Dicky advanced to the shop-board, and as he did so the girl turned and
recognised him with a faint, very shy smile.

"If you please," he said politely, "I want change for this--if you can
spare it."

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the man, staring.  "What, _another?_"

"The bird-seller up the road had no change about him.  And--and, if you
please," went on Dick hardily, with a glance at the girl, "she hurt her
hands putting out a fire just now.  I expect my father gave her the
money for that.  But she must have burnt her hands _dreffully!_"--Dicky
had not quite outgrown his infantile lisp--"and if she's come for stuff
to put on them, please I want to pay for it."

"But I don't want you to," put in the girl, still hesitating by the
counter.

"But I'd _rather_ insisted Dicky.

"Tut!" said the drug-seller.  "A matter of twopence won't break either
of us.  Captain Vyell's boy, are you?  Well, then, I'll take your
coppers on principle."

He counted out the change, and Dicky--who was not old enough yet to do
sums--pretended to find it correct.  But he was old enough to have
acquired charming manners, and after thanking the drug-seller, gave the
girl quite a grown-up little bow as he passed out.

She would have followed, but the man said, "Stay a moment.  What's your
name?"

"Ruth Josselin."

"Age?"

"I was sixteen last month."

"Then listen to a word of advice, Ruth Josselin, and don't you take
money like that from fine gentlemen like the Collector.  They don't give
it to the ugly ones.  Understand?"

"Thank you," she said.  "I am going to give it back;" and slipping the
guinea into her pocket, she said "Good evening," and walked swiftly out
in the wake of the child.

The drug-seller looked after her shrewdly.  He was a moral man.


Ruth, hurrying out upon the side-walk, descried the child a few paces up
the road.  He had come to a halt; was, in fact, plucking up his courage
to go and demand the bird-cage.  She overtook him.

"I was sent out to look for you," she said.  "I oughtn't to have wasted
time buying that ointment; but my hands were hurting me.  Please, you
are to come home and change your clothes for dinner."

"I'll come in a minute," said Dicky, "if you'll stand here and wait."

He might be called by that word again; and without knowing why, he
dreaded her hearing it.  She waited while he trotted forward, nerving
himself to face the crowd again.  Lo! when he reached the booth, all the
bystanders had melted away.  The bird-seller was covering up his cages
with loose wrappers, making ready to pack up for the night.

"Hello!" he said cheerfully.  "Thought I'd lost you for good."

He took the child's money and handed the canary cage across the sill;
also the bird-whistle, wrapped in a scrap of paper.  Many times in the
course of a career which brought him much fighting and some little fame,
Dicky Vyell remembered this his first lesson in courage--that if you
walk straight up to an enemy, as likely as not you find him vanished.

But he had not quite reached the end of his alarms.  As he took the
cage, a parrot at the back of the booth uplifted his voice and
squawked,--

"No prerogative!  No prerogative!  No prerogative!"

"You mustn't mind _him_," said the bird-seller genially.  "He's like the
crowd--picks up a cry an' harps on it without understandin'."

Master Dicky understood it no better; but thanked the man and ran off,
prize in hand, to rejoin the girl.

They hurried back to the Inn.  At the gateway she paused.

"I let you say what was wrong just now," she explained.  "Your father
didn't give me that money for putting out the fire."

Here she hesitated.  Dicky could not think what it mattered, or why her
voice was so timid.

"Oh," said he carelessly, "I dare say it was just because he liked you.
Father has plenty of money."



Chapter IV.


FATHER AND SON.


The dinner set before Captain Vyell comprised a dish of oysters, a fish
chowder, a curried crab, a fried fowl with white sauce, a saddle of
tenderest mutton, and various sweets over which Manasseh had thrown the
elegant flourishes of his art.  The wine came from the Rhone valley--a
Hermitage of the Collector's own shipment.  The candles that lit the
repast stood in the Collector's own silver candlesticks.  As an old
Roman general carried with him on foreign service, packed in panniers on
mule-back, a tessellated pavement to be laid down for him at each
camping halt and repacked when the troops moved forward, so did Captain
Vyell on his progresses of inspection travel with all the apparatus of a
good table.

Dicky, seated opposite his father in a suit of sapphire blue velvet with
buttons of cut steel, partook only of the fried fowl and of a syllabub.
He had his glass of wine too, and sipped at it, not liking it much, but
encouraged by his father, who held that a fine palate could not be
cultivated too early.

By some process of dishing-up best known to himself (but with the aid,
no doubt, of the "dam scullion") Manasseh, who had cooked the dinner,
also served it; noiselessly, wearing white gloves because his master
abominated the sight of a black hand at meals.  These gloves had a
fascination for Dicky.  They attracted his eyes as might the
intervolved play of two large white moths in the penumbra beyond the
candle-light, between his father's back and the dark sideboard; but he
fought against the attraction because he knew that to be aware of a
servant was an offence against good manners at table.

His father encouraged him to talk, and he told of his purchase--but not
all the story.  Not for worlds--instinct told him--must he mention the
word he had heard spoken.  Yet he got so far as to say,--

"The people here don't like us--do they, father?"

Captain Vyell laughed.  "No, that's very certain.  And, to tell you the
truth, if I had known you were wandering the street by yourself I might
have felt uneasy.  Manasseh shall take you for a walk to-morrow.
One can never be sure of the _canaille_."

"What does that mean?"

Captain Vyell explained.  The _canaille_, he said, were the common folk,
whose part in this world was to be ruled.  He explained further that to
belong to the upper or ruling class it did not suffice to be well-born
(though this was almost essential); one must also cultivate the manners
proper to that station, and appear, as well as be, a superior.  Nor was
this all; there were complications, which Dicky would learn in time;
what was called "popular rights," for instance--rights which even a King
must not be allowed to override; and these were so precious that (added
the Collector) the upper classes must sometimes fight and lay down their
lives for them.

Dick perpended.  He found this exceedingly interesting--the more so
because it came, though in a curiously different way, to much the same
as Miss Quiney had taught him out of the catechism.  Miss Quiney had
used pious words; in Miss Quiney's talk everything--even to sitting
upright at table--was mixed up with God and an all-seeing Eye; and his
father--with a child's deadly penetration Dicky felt sure of it--was
careless about God.

This, by the way, had often puzzled and even frightened him.  God, like
a great Sun, loomed so largely through Miss Quiney's scheme of things
(which it were more precise, perhaps, to term a fog) that for certain,
and apart from the sin of it and the assurance of going to hell, every
one removed from God must be sitting in pitch-darkness.  But lo! when
his father talked everything became clear and distinct; there was no sun
at all to be seen, but there was also no darkness.  On the contrary, a
hundred things grew visible at once, and intelligible and
common-sensible as Miss Quiney never contrived to present them.

This was puzzling; and, moreover, the child could not tolerate the
thought of his father's going to hell--to the flames and unbearable
thirst of it.  To be sure Miss Quiney had never hinted this punishment
for her employer, or even a remote chance of it, and Dicky's good
breeding had kept him from confronting her major premise with the
particular instance of his father, although the conclusion of that
syllogism meant everything to him.  Or it may be that he was afraid.
. . . Once, indeed, like Sindbad in the cave, he had seen a glimmering
chance of escape.  It came when, reading in his Scripture lesson that
Christ consorted by choice with publicans and sinners, he had been
stopped by Miss Quiney with the information that "publican" meant
"a kind of tax-collector."  "Like papa?" asked the child, and held his
breath for the answer.  "Oh, not in the least like your dear papa,"
Miss Quiney made haste to assure him; "but a quite low class of person,
and, I should say, connected rather with the Excise.  You must remember
that all this happened in the East, a long time ago."  Poor soul! the
conscientiousness of her conscience (so to speak) had come to rest upon
turning such corners genteelly, and had grown so expert at it that she
scarcely breathed a sigh of relief.  The child bent his head over the
book.  His eyes were hidden from her, and she never guessed what hope
she had dashed.


It was a relief then--after being forced at one time or another to put
aside or pigeon-hole a hundred questions on which Miss Quiney's
teaching and his father's practice appeared at variance--to find a point
upon which the certainty of both converged.  Heaven and hell might be
this or that; but in this world the poor deserved their place, and must
be kept to it.

"That seems fine," said Dicky, after a long pause.

"What seems fine?"  His father, tasting the mutton with approval, had
let slip his clue to the child's thought.

"Why, that poor people have rights too, and we ought to stand up for
them--like you said," answered Dicky, not too grammatically.

"They are our rights too, you see," said his father.

Dicky did not see; but his eagerness jumped this gap in the argument.
"Papa," he asked with a sudden flush, "did you ever stand up to a King
on the poor people's side, and fight--and all that?"

"Well, you see"--the Collector smiled--"I was never called upon.
But it's in the blood.  Has Miss Quiney ever told you about Oliver
Cromwell?"

"Yes.  He cut off King Charles's head. . . . I don't think Miss Quiney
liked him for that, though she didn't say so."

The Collector was still smiling.  "He certainly helped to cut off King
Charles's head, and--right or wrong--it's remembered against him.
But he did any amount of great things too.  He was a masterful man; and
perhaps the reason why Miss Quiney held her tongue is that he happens to
be an ancestor of ours, and she knew it."

"Oliver Cromwell?"  Dicky repeated the name slowly, with awe.

"He was my great-great-grandfather, and you can add on another 'great'
for yourself.  I am called Oliver after him.  They even say," added
Captain Vyell, sipping his wine, "that I have some of his features; and
so, perhaps, will you when you grow up.  But of your chance of that you
shall judge before long.  I am having a copy of his portrait sent over
from England."

For a moment or two these last remarks scarcely penetrated to the boy's
hearing.  Like all boys, he naturally desired greatness; unlike most,
he was conscious of standing above the crowd, but without a guess that
he derived the advantage from anything better than accident.  His
father had the good fortune to be rich.  For himself--well, Dicky
was born with one of those simple natures that incline rather to
distrust than to overrate their own merits.  None the less he
desired and loved greatness--thus early, and throughout his life--and
it came as a tremendous, a magnificent shock to him that he
enjoyed it as a birthright.  The repetition of "great"--"he was my
great-great-grandfather;"  "you can add another 'great' for yourself"--
hummed in his ears.  A full half a minute ticked by before he grasped at
the remainder of his father's speech, and, like a breaking twig, it
dropped him to bathos.

"But--but--" Dicky passed a hand over his face--"Miss Quiney said that
Oliver Cromwell was covered with warts!"

Captain Vyell laughed outright.

"Women have wonderful ways of conveying a prejudice.  Warts?  Well,
there, at any rate, we have the advantage of old Noll."  The Collector,
whose sense of hearing was acute and fastidious, broke off with a sharp
arching of the eyebrows and a glance up at the ceiling, or rather (since
ceiling there was none) at the oaken beams which supported the floor
overhead.  "Manasseh," he said quickly, "be good enough to step upstairs
and inform our landlady that the pitch of her voice annoys me.  She
would seem to be rating a servant girl above."

"Yes, sah."

"Pray desire her to take the girl away and scold her elsewhere."

Manasseh disappeared, and returned two minutes later to report that
"the woman would give no furdah trouble."  He removed the white cloth,
set out the decanters with an apology for the mahogany's indifferent
polish, and withdrew again to prepare his master's coffee.

At once a silence fell between father and son.  Dicky had expected to
hear more of Oliver Cromwell.  He stared across the dull shine of the
table at his parent's coat of peach-coloured velvet and shirt front of
frilled linen; at the lace ruffle on the wrist, the signet ring on the
little finger, the hand--firm, but fine--as it reached for a decanter or
fell to playing with a gold toothpick.  He loved this father of his with
the helpless, concentred love of a motherless child; admired him, as all
must admire, only more loyally.  To feel constraint in so magnificent a
presence was but natural.

It would have astonished him to learn that his father, lolling there so
easily and toying with a toothpick, shared that constraint.  Yet it was
so.  Captain Vyell did not understand children.  Least of all did he
understand this son of his begetting.  He could be kind to him, even
extravagantly, by fits and starts; desired to be kind constantly; could
rally and chat with him in hearing of a third person, though that third
person were but a servant waiting at table.  But to sit alone facing the
boy and converse with him was a harder business, and gave him an absurd
feeling of _gene_; and this (though possibly he did not know it) was the
real reason why, having brought Dicky in the coach for a treat, he
himself had ridden all day in saddle.

Dicky was the first to resume conversation.

"Papa," he asked, still pondering the problem of rich and poor, "don't
some of the old families die out?"

"They do."

"Then others must come up to take their place, or the people who do the
ruling would come to an end."

"That's the way of it, my boy."  The Collector nodded and cracked a
walnut.  "New families spring up; and a devilish ugly show they usually
make of it at first.  It takes three generations, they say, to breed a
gentleman; and, in my opinion, that's under the mark."

"And a lady?"

"Women are handier at picking up appearances; 'adaptable' 's the word.
But the trouble with them is to find out whether they have the real
thing or not.  For my part, if you want the real thing, I believe there
are more gentlemen than gentlewomen in the world; and Batty Langton says
you may breed out the old Adam, but you'll never get rid of Eve. . . .
But, bless my soul, Dicky, it's early days for you to be discussing the
sex!"

Dicky, however, was perfectly serious.

"But I _do_ mean what you call the real thing, papa.  Couldn't a poor
girl be born so that she had it from the start?  Oh, I can't tell what I
mean exactly--"

"On the contrary, child, you are putting it uncommonly well; at any
rate, you are making me understand what you mean, and that's the A and Z
of it, whether in talk or in writing.  'Is there--can there be--such a
thing as a natural born lady?' that's your question, hey?"
The Collector peeled his walnut and smiled to himself.  In other
company--Batty Langton's, for example--he would have answered cynically
that to him the phenomenon of a natural born lady would first of all
suggest a doubt of her mother's virtue.  "Well, no," he answered after a
while; "if you met such a person, and could trace back her family
history, ten to one you'd discover good blood somewhere in it.
Old stocks fail, die away underground, and, as time goes on, are
forgotten; then one fine day up springs a shoot nobody can account for.
It's the old sap taking a fresh start.  See?"

Dicky nodded.  It would take him some time work out the theory, but he
liked the look of it.

His drowsed young brain--for the hour was past bedtime--applied it idly
to a picture that stood out, sharp and vivid, from the endless train of
the day's impressions: the picture of a girl with quiet, troubled eyes,
composed lips, and hands that beat upon a blazing curtain, not flinching
at the pain. . . . And just then, as it were in a dream, he beat of her
hands echoed in a soft tapping, the door behind his father opened
gently, and Dicky sat up with a start, wide awake again and staring, for
the girl herself stood in the doorway.



Chapter V.


RUTH.


"Hey, what is it?" the Collector demanded, slewing himself to the
half-about in his chair.

The girl stepped forward into the candle-light.  Over her shoulders she
wore a faded plaid, the ends of which her left hand clutched and held
together at her bosom.

"Your Honour's pardon for troubling," she said, and laying a gold coin
on the table, drew back with a slight curtsy.  "But I think you gave
me this by mistake; and now is my only chance to give it back.
I am going home in a few minutes."

The Collector glanced at the coin, and from that to the girl's face, on
which his eyes lingered.

"Gad, I recollect!" he said.  "You were the wench that pulled off my
boots?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, upon my honour, I forget at this moment if I gave it by mistake
or because of your face.  No, hang me!" he went on, while she flushed,
not angrily, but as though the words hurt her, "it must have been by
mistake.  I couldn't have forgot so much better a reason."

To this she answered nothing, but put forward her hand as if to push the
coin nearer.

"Certainly not," said he, still with eyes on her face.  "I wish you to
take it.  By the way, I heard the landlady's voice just now, letting
loose upon somebody.  Was it on you?"

"Yes."

"And you are going home to-night, you say.  Has she turned you out?"

"Yes."  The girl's hand moved as if gathering the plaid closer over her
bosom.  Her voice held no resentment.  Her eyes were fixed upon the
coin, which, however, she made no further motion to touch; and this
downward glance showed at its best the lovely droop of her long
eyelashes.

The Collector continued to take stock of her, and with a growing wonder.

The lower half of the face's oval was perhaps Unduly gaunt and a trifle
overweighted by the broad brow.  The whole body stood a thought too high
for its breadth, with a hint of coltishness in the thin arms and thick
elbow-joints.  So judged the Collector, as he would have appraised a
slave or any young female animal; while as a connoisseur he knew that
these were faults pointing towards ultimate perfection, and at this
stage even necessary to it.

For assurance he asked her, "How old are you?"

"Sixteen."

"That's as I guessed," said he, and added to himself, "My God, this is
going to be one of the loveliest things in creation!"  Still, as she
bent her eyes to the coin on the table, he ran his appraising glance
over her neck and shoulders, judging--so far as the ugly shawl
permitted--the head's poise, the set of the coral ear, the delicate wave
of hair on the neck's nape.

"Why is she turning you out?"

"A window curtain took fire.  She said it was my fault."

"But it was not your fault at all!" cried Dicky.  "Papa, the curtain
took fire in my room, and she beat it out.  The whole house might have
been burnt down but for her.  She beat it out, and made nothing of it,
though it hurt her horribly.  Look at her hands, papa!"

"Hold out your hands," his father commanded.

She stretched them out.  The ointment, as she turned them palms upward,
shone under the candle rays.

"Turn them the other way," he commanded, after a long look at them.
The words might mean that the sight afflicted him, but his tone scarcely
suggested this.  She turned her hands, and he scrutinised the backs of
them very deliberately.  "It's a shame," said he at length.

"Of course it's a shame!" the boy agreed hotly.  "Papa, won't you ring
for the landlady and tell her so, and then she won't be sent away."

"My dear Dicky," his father answered, "you mistake.  I was thinking that
it was a shame to coarsen such hands with housework."  He eyed the girl
again, and she met him with a straight face--flushed a little and
plainly perturbed, but not shrinking, although her bosom heaved--for his
admiration was entirely cool and critical.  "What is your name?" he
asked.

"Ruth Josselin."

He appeared to consider this for a moment, and then, reaching out a hand
for the decanter, to dismiss the subject.  "Well, pick up your guinea,"
he said.  "No doubt the woman outside has treated you badly; but I can't
intercede for you, to keep you a drudge here among the saucepans; no,
upon my conscience, I can't.  The fact is, Ruth Josselin, you have the
makings of a beauty, and I'll be no party to spoiling 'em.  What is
more, it seems you have spirit, and no woman with beauty and spirit need
fail to win her game in this world.  That's my creed."  He sipped his
wine.

"If your Honour pleases," said the girl quietly, picking up the coin,
"the woman called me bad names, and I was not wanting you at all to
speak for me."

"Oho!"  The Collector set down his glass and laughed.  "So that's the
way of it--'_Nobody asked you, sir, she said._' Dicky, we sit rebuked."

"But--" she hesitated, and then went on rapidly in the lowest of low
tones--"if your Honour wouldn't mind giving me silver instead of gold?
They won't change gold for me in the town; they'll think I have stolen
it.  Most Sundays I'm allowed to take home broken meats to mother and
grandfather, and to-night I shan't be given any, now that I'm sent away.
They'll be expecting me, and indeed, sir, I can't bear to face them--or
I wouldn't ask you.  I beg your Honour's pardon for saying so much."

"Hullo!" exclaimed the Collector.  "Why, yes, to be sure, you must be
grandchild to the old man of the sea--him that I met on the beach this
afternoon, t'other side of the headland.  Lives in a hovel with a wood
pile beside it, and a daughter that looks out for wreckage?"

"Your Honour spoke with them?"  Into Ruth's face there mounted a deeper
tide of colour.  But whereas the first flush had been dark with
distress, this second spread with a glow of affection.  Her eyes seemed
to take light from it, and shone.

"I spoke with the old man.  Since you have said so much, I may say more.
I gave him food; he was starving."

She bent her head.  Her hands moved a little, with a gesture most
pitiful to see.  "I was afraid," she muttered, "with these gales, and no
getting to the oyster beds."

"He took some food, too, to his daughter, with a bottle of wine, as I
remember."

A bright tear dropped.  In the candle-light Dicky saw it splash on the
back of her hand, by the wrist.

"God bless your Honour!"  Dicky could just hear the words.

The door opened and Manasseh entered, bearing the coffee on a silver
tray.

"Manasseh," said his master, "take that guinea and bring me change for
it.  If you have no silver in the treasury get the landlady to change it
for you."

Manasseh was affronted.  His hand came near to shaking as he poured and
handed the coffee.

"Yo' Hon'ah doan off'n use de metal," he answered.  "Dat's sho'.
But whiles an' again yo' Hon'ah condescends ter want it.  Dat bein' so,
I keep it by me--_an'_ polished.  I doan fetch yo' Hon'ah w'at any low
trash has handled."

He withdrew, leaving this fine shaft to rankle, and by-and-by entered
with a small velvet bag, from the neck of which he shook a small cascade
of silver coins, all exquisitely polished.

"Count me out change for a guinea," commanded his master.

Manasseh obeyed.

"Now empty the bag, put into it what you have counted, and sweep up the
rest."