"Hump!" muttered Joe, as he turned over a folio of papers before him.
"Ay, here it is," said he. "Oliver Moore wishes to go to America, and
will give up his lease; he only begs that you will vouchsafe to him some
small compensation--"

"Compensation! That word is one of yours, Mr. Raper, and I've no doubt
has a classical origin,--you got it in Homer, perhaps; but, let me
tell you, sir, that it is a piece of vulgar cant, and, what is worse,
a swindle! Ay, grow pale if you like; but I 'll repeat the word,--a
swindle! When a man wants to sell a pair of old boots, does he think
of charging for all the blacking he has put on them for the three years
before? And yet that is precisely what you dignify with the name of
compensation. Tell him if he built a house, that he lived in it; if he
fenced the land, that the neighbors' cattle made fewer trespasses; if
he drained, the soil was the drier. Your cry of compensation won't do,
Raper. I might as well ask an insurance office to pay me for taking care
of my health, and give me a bonus whenever I took castor oil!"

"The cases are not alike, sir. If his improvements be of a permanent
character--"

"Is this an office, Mister Raper, or is it a debating society?" broke in
Fagan. "My answer to Moore is, pay, and go--to the devil, if he likes."

"Sir Harry Wheeler," continued Joe, "writes from Cheltenham that he
thinks there must be a mistake about the bill for three hundred and
forty odd,--that it was included In the bond he gave in September last."

"File a bill, send for Crowther, and let him proceed against him."

"But I think he 's right, sir; the memorandum is somewhere here. I put
it amongst the W's; for we have no box for Sir Harry."

"It's a nice way to keep accounts, Mister Raper; I must say it's very
creditable to you," said Fagan, who, when any inaccuracy occurred,
always reproached Joe with the system that he rigidly compelled him
to follow. "Perhaps it's classical, however; maybe it's the way the
ancients did it! But I 'll tell you what, sir, you 'd cut an ugly figure
before the courts if you came to be examined; your Latin and Greek
wouldn't screen you there."

"Here it is,--here's the note," said Joe, who had all the while been
prosecuting his search. "It's in your own hand, and mentions that this
sum forms a portion of the debt now satisfied by his bond."

"Cancel the bill, and tell him so. What's that letter yonder?"

"It is marked 'strictly private and confi