have.

His statement of the circumstances bewildered me even more. He was in no
hurry to explain them; when we met next morning he waited for me to
question him, and said, 'Yes. I think we have beaten them so far!' His
mind was pre-occupied, he informed me, concerning the defence of a lady
much intrigued against, and resuming the subject: 'Yes, we have beaten
them up to a point, Richie. And that reminds me: would you have me go
down to Riversley and show the squire the transfer paper? At any rate you
can now start for Sarkeld, and you do, do you not? To-day: to-morrow at
latest.'

I insisted: 'But how, and in what manner has this money been paid?' The
idea struck me that he had succeeded in borrowing it.

'Transferred to me in the Bank, and intelligence of the fact sent to
Dettermain and Newson, my lawyers,' he replied. 'Beyond that, I know as
little as you, Richie, though indubitably I hoped to intimidate them.
If,' he added, with a countenance perfectly simple and frank, 'they
expect me to take money for a sop, I am not responsible, as I by no means
provoked it, for their mistake.

'I proceed. The money is useful to you, so I rejoice at it.'

Five and twenty thousand pounds was the amount.

'No stipulation was attached to it?'

'None. Of course a stipulation was implied: but of that I am not bound to
be cognizant.'

'Absurd!' I cried: 'it can't have come from the quarter you suspect.'

'Where else?' he asked.

I thought of the squire, Lady Edbury, my aunt, Lady Sampleman, Anna
Penrhys, some one or other of his frantic female admirers. But the
largeness of the amount, and the channel selected for the payment,
precluded the notion that any single person had come to succour him in
his imminent need, and, as it chanced, mine.

Observing that my speculations wavered, he cited numerous instances in
his life of the special action of Providence in his favour, and was bold
enough to speak of a star, which his natural acuteness would have checked
his doing before me, if his imagination had not been seriously struck.

'You hand the money over to me, sir?' I said.

'Without a moment of hesitation, my dear boy,' he melted me by answering.

'You believe you have received a bribe?'

'That is my entire belief--the sole conclusion I can arrive at. I will
tell you, Richie: the old Marquis of Edbury once placed five thousand
pounds to my account on a proviso that I should--neglect, is the better
word, my Case. I inheri