all have--you shall
have a hundred pounds! I mean it; dash me, I mean it! You've been
devilish useful to me; and what's more I haven't done with you yet. Do
you twig, old boy?'

'You mean that a confidential agent in England, unsuspected, may be
needed?'

'Shouldn't wonder if I do.'

'Can't be managed under double the money, my good sir,' observed
Scawthorne, with unmistakable seriousness. 'Worth your while, I promise
you. Have another glass. Fair commission. Think it over.'

'Look here! I shall have to make the girl an allowance.'

'There's the filter-works. Don't be stingy.'

Joseph was growing very red in the face. He drank glass after glass; he
flung his arms about; he capered.

'Damn me if you shall call me that, Scaw! Two hundred it shall be. But
what was the old cove up to? Why did he destroy the other will? What
would the new one have been?'

'Can't answer either question, but it's probably as well for you that
_to-morrow_ never comes.'

'Now just see how things turn out!' went on the other, in the joy of
his heart. 'All the thought and the trouble that I've gone through this
last year, when I might have taken it easy and waited for chance to
make me rich! Look at Kirkwood's business. There was you and me
knocking our heads together and raising lumps on them, as you may say,
to find out a plan of keeping him and Jane apart, when all the while
we'd nothing to do but to look on and wait, if only we'd known. Now
this is what I call the working of Providence, Scawthorne. Who's going
to say after this, that things ain't as they should be? Everything's
for the best, my boy; I see that clearly enough.'

'Decidedly,' assented Scawthorne, with a smile. 'The honest man is
always rewarded in the long run. And that reminds me; I too have had a
stroke of luck.'

He went on to relate that his position in the office of Percival & Peel
was now nominally that of an articled clerk, and that in three years'
time, if all went well, he would be received in the firm as junior
partner.

'There's only one little project I am sorry to give up, in connection
with your affairs, Snowdon. If it had happened that your daughter had
inherited the money, why shouldn't I have had the honour of becoming
your son-in-law?'

Joseph stared, then burst into hearty laughter.

'I tell you what,' he said, recovering himself, 'why should you give up
that idea? She's as good a girl as you'll ever come across, I can tell
you that, my boy