ery crust of bread he earns, with his tears--or if not with
them, with the colds he catches in his head--is it a sin for that man to
earn it? Say there is anything again earning it." This I put to myself
strong, as in duty bound; "how can it be said without blaming Lawyer
Lightwood for offering it to be earned?" And was it for ME to blame
Lawyer Lightwood? No.'

'No,' said Eugene.

'Certainly not, Governor,' Mr Riderhood acquiesced. 'So I made up my
mind to get my trouble off my mind, and to earn by the sweat of my brow
what was held out to me. And what's more, he added, suddenly turning
bloodthirsty, 'I mean to have it! And now I tell you, once and away,
Lawyer Lightwood, that Jesse Hexam, commonly called Gaffer, his hand and
no other, done the deed, on his own confession to me. And I give him up
to you, and I want him took. This night!'

After another silence, broken only by the fall of the ashes in the
grate, which attracted the informer's attention as if it were the
chinking of money, Mortimer Lightwood leaned over his friend, and said
in a whisper:

'I suppose I must go with this fellow to our imperturbable friend at the
police-station.'

'I suppose,' said Eugene, 'there is no help for it.'

'Do you believe him?'

'I believe him to be a thorough rascal. But he may tell the truth, for
his own purpose, and for this occasion only.'

'It doesn't look like it.'

'HE doesn't,' said Eugene. 'But neither is his late partner, whom he
denounces, a prepossessing person. The firm are cut-throat Shepherds
both, in appearance. I should like to ask him one thing.'

The subject of this conference sat leering at the ashes, trying with
all his might to overhear what was said, but feigning abstraction as the
'Governors Both' glanced at him.

'You mentioned (twice, I think) a daughter of this Hexam's,' said
Eugene, aloud. 'You don't mean to imply that she had any guilty
knowledge of the crime?'

The honest man, after considering--perhaps considering how his answer
might affect the fruits of the sweat of his brow--replied, unreservedly,
'No, I don't.'

'And you implicate no other person?'

'It ain't what I implicate, it's what Gaffer implicated,' was the dogged
and determined answer. 'I don't pretend to know more than that his words
to me was, "I done it." Those was his words.'

'I must see this out, Mortimer,' whispered Eugene, rising. 'How shall we
go?'

'Let us walk,' whispered Lightwood, 'and give this fellow