"

And he explained what he meant. What would Denry take for the entire
secret and rights of the Chocolate Remedy and the use of the name
"Machin" ("without which none was genuine").

"What do you offer?" Denry asked.

"Well, I'll give you a hundred pounds down, and that's my last word."

Denry was staggered. A hundred pounds for simply nothing at all--for
dipping bits of chocolate in lemon-juice!

He shook his head.

"I'll take two hundred," he replied.

And he got two hundred. It was probably the worst bargain that he ever
made in his life. For the Chocolate Remedy continued obstinately in
demand for ten years afterwards. But he was glad to be rid of the thing;
it was spoiling his sleep and wearing him out.

He had other worries. The boatmen of Llandudno regarded him as an enemy
of the human race. If they had not been nature's gentlemen they would
have burned him alive at a stake. Cregeen, in particular, consistently
referred to him in terms which could not have been more severe had Denry
been the assassin of Cregeen's wife and seven children. In daring to
make over a hundred pounds a week out of a ramshackle old lifeboat that
Cregeen had sold to him for thirty-five pounds, Denry was outraging
Cregeen's moral code. Cregeen had paid thirty-five pounds for the
_Fleetwinz_, a craft immeasurably superior to Denry's nameless tub.
And was Cregeen making a hundred pounds a week out of it? Not a hundred
shillings! Cregeen genuinely thought that he had a right to half Denry's
profits. Old Simeon, too, seemed to think that _he_ had a right to
a large percentage of the same profits. And the Corporation, though it
was notorious that excursionists visited the town purposely to voyage in
the lifeboat, the Corporation made difficulties--about the embarking and
disembarking, about the photographic strip of beach, about the crowds on
the pavement outside the photograph shop. Denry learnt that he had
committed the sin of not being a native of Llandudno. He was a stranger,
and he was taking money out of the town. At times he wished he could
have been born again. His friend and saviour was the Local Secretary of
the Lifeboat Institution, who happened to be a Town Councillor. This
worthy man, to whom Denry paid over a pound a day, was invaluable to
him. Further, Denry was invited--nay commanded--to contribute to nearly
every church, chapel, mission, and charity in Carnarvonshire,
Flintshire, and other counties. His youthfulness w