der man
became personal.

"If you'll excuse me, Mister Raymond," he said, "if you'll excuse me, as
one who's known you ever since you went out of knickers, sir, I'd
venture to warn you as a good friend, against a lot that's being said in
Bridetown and Bridport, too. You know how rumours fly about. But a good
deal more's being said behind your back than ought to be said; and
you'll do well to clear it up. And by the same token, Mister Motyer's
opening his mouth the widest. As for me, I got it from Job Legg over the
way at 'The Seven Stars'; and he got it from a young woman at Bridetown
Mills, niece of Missis Northover. So these things fly about."

Raymond was aware that Richard Gurd held no puritan opinions. He
possessed tolerance and charity for all sorts and conditions, and left
morals alone.

"And what did you do, Dick? I should think you'd learned by this time to
let the gossip of a public-house go in at one ear and out of the other."

"Yes--for certain. I learned to do that before you were born; but when
things are said up against those I value and respect, it's different.
I've told three men they were liars, to-day, and I may have to tell
thirty so, to-morrow."

Raymond felt his heart go slower.

"What the deuce is the matter?"

"Just this: they say you promised to marry a mill girl at Bridetown
and--the usual sort of thing--and, knowing you, I told them it was a
lie."

The young man uttered a scornful ejaculation.

"Tell them to mind their own business," he said. "Good heavens--what a
storm in a teacup it is! They couldn't bleat louder if I'd committed a
murder."

"There's more to it than to most of these stories," explained Richard.
"You see it sounds a very disgraceful sort of thing, you being your
brother's right hand at the works."

"I'm not that, anyway."

"Well, you're an Ironsyde, Mister Raymond, and to have a story of this
sort told about an Ironsyde is meat and drink for the baser sort. So I
hope you'll authorise me to contradict it."

"Good God--is there no peace, even here?" burst out Raymond. "Can even a
man I thought large-minded and broad-minded and all the rest of it, go
on twaddling about this as if he was an old washer-woman? Here--get me
my bill--I've finished. And if you're going to begin preaching to people
who come here for their food and drink, you'd better chuck a pub and
start a chapel."

Mr. Gurd was stricken dumb. A thousand ghosts from the grave had not
startled him s