ney in gold or notes. Therefore, as I had not done
so, I should be kept in the ice house and coaxed till I signed the
cheque. Then they could close all the doors--no need of stronger
measures--and leave me tied on the floor of the ice house. Who, at
least for long, would be any the wiser?

I had time for many things, there, in that chilly abode. They chained
my ankles to rings let into the wall, the bolts of which appeared
through the lining of planks. I was given a mattress to lie upon, and
occasionally Mad Jeremy threw me a loaf of bread, as one does to a dog.

Most of all, I was afraid that my faculties should rust, or even that I
should go mad, so by steady application I learned the multiplication
table up to twenty-four-times, making each as familiar to me as ten
times ten. This would prove of great use to me afterwards in my
business, and those who do have transactions with me wonder at my
quickness while I laugh at their simplicity.

Then I took up one by one all the concerns of every man I knew, and set
myself problems as against myself. As thus: Yarrow, of Breckonside,
will be coming to me shortly for two hundred loads of fodder for the
company's horses. He has the contract down at Clifton--the tramway
company--and get the fodder he must. And how shall I mix the stuff so
that it will be passed when it comes to be taken off his hands?

I thought all this out, putting myself in the other's place, and no one
can imagine--who has not tried it--how excellent a lesson in affairs it
proved. After that drill in the old ice house, where at times I was
well-nigh frozen, I seemed to see inside every man's skull with whom I
was making a bargain. It was not only a great advantage, but in a sort
of way it was poetry also. I don't expect Joseph to understand this
any more than I understand his maunderings about love and girls. Not
but what I am fond of my wife. She brought me a good round sum, as
every woman ought, which I have used with care and caused to breed
handsomely. But if I were to tell Mary that I loved her, I think she
would go at once and order my tombstone. At least, she would call in a
doctor!

Still, with all my invention, the time hung heavy. Each day the Orrin
woman came bringing Lightbody's cheque, with new arguments why I should
sign it. I put her off, though sometimes not without difficulty. I
think she must have been partly cracked, in spite of her apparently
business-like habits,