on. However, as you say
yourself, now to business--about these leases."

"I trust," continued Travers, "that I am both an honest man and a
gentleman, yet I expect a bribe for every lease."

"Well, then," replied Henderson, "it is not generally supposed that
either an honest man or a gentleman--"

"Would take a bribe?--eh?"

"Well, d--n it, no; not exactly that either; but come, let us understand
each other. If you will be wilful on it, why a wilful man, they say,
must have his way. Bribery, however--rank bribery--is a--"

"Crime to which neither an honest man nor a gentleman would stoop. You
see I anticipate what you are about to say; you despise bribery, Mr.
Henderson?"

"Sir," replied the other, rather warmly, "I trust that I am a gentleman
and an honest man, too."

"But still, a wilful man, Mr. Henderson must have his way, you know.
Well, of course, you are a gentleman and an honest man."

He then rose, and touching the bell, said to the servant who answered
it:

"Send in the man named Darby Skinadre."

If that miserable wretch was thin and shrivelled-looking when first
introduced to our readers, he appeared at the present period little
else than the shadow of what he had been. He not only lost heavily the
usurious credit he had given, in consequence of the wide-spread poverty
and crying distress of the wretched people, who were mostly insolvent,
but he suffered severely by the outrages which had taken place, and
doubly so in consequence of the anxiety which so many felt to wreak
their vengeance on him, under that guise, for his heartlessness and
blood-sucking extortions upon them.

"Your name," proceeded the agent, "is Darby Skinadre?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you have given this gentleman the sum of a hundred pounds, as a
bribe, for promising you a lease of Cornelius Dalton's farm?"

"I gave him a hundred pounds, but not at all as a bribe, sir; I'm an
honest man, I trust--an' the Lord forbid I'd have anything to do wid a
bribe; an' if you an' he knew--if you only knew, both o' you--the hard
strivin,' an' scrapin,' an' sweepin' I had to get it together--"

"That will do, sir; be silent. You received this money, Mr. Henderson?"

"Tut, Travers, my good friend; this is playing too high a card about
such a matter. Don't you know, devilish well, that these things are
common, aye, and among gentlemen and honest men too, as you say?"

"Well, that is a discussion upon which I shall not enter. Now, as you
say