agined that a fellow without a sovereign in the world was speaking to him
like that. If I had knocked him down the satisfaction would have been very
slight in comparison.'

The gloom of nightfall had come upon us, and I could no longer see his face
distinctly, but his voice told me that he still savoured that triumph. He
spoke with exultant passion. I was beginning to understand Ireton.

'Isn't the story interesting?' he asked, after a pause.

'Very. Pray go on.'

'Well, you mustn't suppose that it was a mere bit of crazy bravado. I knew
how I was going to get the money--the forty guineas. And as soon as I could
command myself, I went to do the business.

'A fellow-clerk in the drug warehouse had been badly in want of money not
long before that, and I knew he had borrowed twenty pounds from a loan
office, paying it back week by week, with heavy interest, out of his screw,
poor devil. I could do the same. I went straight off to the lender. It was
a fellow called Crowther; he lived in Dean Street, Soho; in a window on the
ground floor there was a card with "Sums from One pound to a Hundred lent
at short notice." I was lucky enough to find him at home; we did our
business in a little back room, where there was a desk and a couple of
chairs, and nothing else but dirt. I expected to find an oldish man, but he
seemed about my own age, and on the whole I didn't dislike the look of
him,--a rather handsome young fellow, fairly well dressed, with a taking
sort of smile. I began by telling him where I was employed, and mentioned
my fellow-clerk, whom he knew. That made him quite cheerful; he offered me
a drink, and we got on very well. But he thought forty guineas a big sum;
would I tell him what I wanted it for? No, I wouldn't do that. Well, how
long would it take me to pay it back? Could I pay a pound a week? No, I
couldn't. He began to shake his head and to look at me thoughtfully. Then
he asked no end of questions, to find out who I was and what people I had
belonging to me, and what my chances were. Then he made me have another
drink, and at last I was persuaded into telling him the whole story. First
of all he stared, and then he laughed; I never saw a man laugh more
heartily. At last he said, "Why didn't you tell me you had value in hand?
See here, I'll look at that picture on Monday morning, and I shouldn't
wonder if we can do business." This alarmed me,--I was afraid he might get
talking to the picture-dealer. But he p