o good; just watch and tell me."

Mr. Gillat said he would, though he did not like the job, and
certainly was ill-fitted for it. Julia knew that, but knew also that
to discover anything she must depend a good deal upon him, unless she
could by searching light upon the store of spirit which she could not
help thinking her father had in or near the house. She determined to
make a systematic search; but before she did so she found time to open
Mijnheer's letter.

It was rather a long letter and very neat. It set forth in formal
Dutch the old man's ideas concerning the daffodil bulb and his offer
regarding it. It should be kept, he said, if it was paid for, not
otherwise. Something now, she was to name her terms, while it was
still uncertain whether its flower would be blue or streaked or even
common yellow--more later, in accordance with the flowering and the
profits likely to arise.

So Julia read and sat staring. An offer for "The Good Comrade." Money
from the people to whom it had always practically belonged in her
estimation. She could not take it from them, it was impossible; the
thing was virtually their own! But if she did not. She re-read Joost's
letter with its protestations, and Mijnheer's with its offer--if she
did not, the little brown bulb would be sent back to her. Mijnheer,
now that he knew of its coming, would insist on its return unless it
were paid for; and Joost, she knew very well, would not deceive his
father and keep it secretly, or defy his father and keep it openly;
the money or the bulb she must have. And the bulb she could not, would
not have again; so the money, unearned, distasteful, having a not too
pleasant savour, must be hers. At last, in this way, without her
contrivance, against her will, there had come a way to pay the debt
of honour!

She sat down and wrote to Mijnheer and named her price. Thirty pounds
she asked for, no more in the future, no less now; that was the only
price she could take for "The Good Comrade," it was the sum
Rawson-Clew had paid to his cousin two years ago.

Johnny posted the letter that afternoon while Julia began her search
for her father's hidden whisky.

All the afternoon Captain Polkington sat in the easy-chair, watching
her contemptuously when she was in sight and moving uneasily when she
was not. He did not think she would find anything, at least not at
once, though he was afraid she would if she kept on long enough and he
left his treasure in its pre