t help you then?"

"Look here, Captain 'Oshspur; I vill tell you vat vill help me, and
vill help Captain Stubber, and vill help everybody. The young lady
isn't for you at all. I know all about it, Captain 'Oshspur. Mr.
Boltby is a very nice gentleman, and understands business."

"What is Mr. Boltby to me?"

"He is a great deal to me, because he vill pay me my moneys, and he
vill pay Captain Stubber, and vill pay everybody. He vill pay you
too, Captain 'Oshspur,--only you must pay poor Valker his moneys.
I have promised Valker he shall have back his moneys, or Sir Harry
shall know that too. You must just give up the young woman;--eh,
Captain 'Oshspur!"

"I'm not going to be dictated to, Mr. Hart."

"When gentlemans is in debt they must be dictated to, or else be
quodded. We mean to have our money from Mr. Boltby, and that at once.
Here is the offer to pay it,--every shilling,--and to pay you! You
must give the lady up. You must go to Mr. Boltby, and write just what
he tells you. If you don't--!"

"Well, if I don't!"

"By the living God, before two weeks are over you shall be in prison.
Bullbean saw it all. Now you know, Captain 'Oshspur. You don't like
dictating to, don't you? If you don't do as you're dictated to, and
that mighty sharp, as sure as my name is Abraham Hart, everything
shall come out. Every d----d thing, Captain 'Oshspur! And now good
morning, Captain 'Oshspur. You had better see Mr. Boltby to-day,
Captain 'Oshspur."

How was a man so weighted to run for such stakes as those he was
striving to carry off? When Mr. Hart left him he was not only sick
in the stomach, but sick at heart also,--sick all over. He had gone
from bad to worse; he had lost the knowledge of the flavour of vice
and virtue; and yet now, when there was present to him the vanishing
possibility of redeeming everything by this great marriage, it seemed
to him that a life of honourable ease--such a life as Sir Harry would
wish him to live if permitted to marry the girl and dwell among his
friends at Humblethwaite--would be much sweeter, much more to his
real taste, than the life which he had led for the last ten years.
What had been his positive delights? In what moments had he actually
enjoyed them? From first to last had there not been trouble and
danger and vexation of spirit, and a savour of dirt about it all,
which even to his palate had been nauseous? Would he not willingly
reform? And yet, when the prospect of reform was bro