d into a flame by my action on the night of
the adventure in Raven Street. Mistress Pennyquick was firm in her
belief that the Cluddes were party to the crime, but that I could
not credit then, and never will.

Mr. Vetch himself came to see me the next day. The poor old man was
quite broken down. He humbly begged my forgiveness for the trouble
he had brought upon me, for so he chose to regard it; and he
confessed to me, what I am sure he never revealed to a living soul
beside, that Cyrus had been for years a thorn in his flesh. He was
a spendthrift and a gambler, and had bled his uncle many a time to
discharge what he called his debts of honor. This drain upon the
lawyer, together with losses he had sustained in the failure of
Chamberlain's Land Bank scheme--that monstrous attempt of the
Tories to set up a rival to the Bank of England--had brought him to
the verge of ruin, and with tears in his eyes he expressed to me
his fear that the matter of my father's will would bring him into
such ill repute that the Shrewsbury folk would no longer trust him
and would give their business into other hands.

This set me a-thinking, and during the week I was allowed to remain
in the old farmhouse I turned over in my mind a plan which, I own,
mightily pleased me. It was clear that I must do something for
myself. I had never had any great liking for farming work, and now
that the position of a yeoman on my own land was denied me I was
not inclined to accept service on the land of another. Mr. Lloyd,
the master of the school, when I went to take leave of him, was
kind enough to say that he would use his interest to obtain for me
a servitorship at Oxford or a sizarship at Cambridge, which would
put me in the way of making a livelihood as a tutor or perhaps as a
parson. But I was not in the mind to be any more subsistent on
charity, even of this modified sort, nor had I indeed any hope of
achieving excellence in the classical tongues, so I thanked him,
but declined his offer.

The idea that had entered my noddle was that I might join Mr.
Vetch, and do something in the practice of law to make amends for
the ill fortune which, unwittingly and indirectly, I had been the
means of bringing upon him. When I had made up my mind, I mooted
the project to Captain Galsworthy, who laughed at it as quixotic,
but confessed that he saw no better course open to me.

"I had liever you took up a more active trade--one in which you
could put to use t