ion. He had been driven over from Cambridge
in a hired gig, which was now standing in the yard, and was dressed, as
Darvell expressed it, 'quite accordingly and genteel.' So Caldigate
passed into the house and found the man seated in the dining-room.

'Perhaps you will step into my study?' said Caldigate. Thus the two men
were seated together in the little room which Caldigate used for his
own purposes.

Caldigate, as he looked at the man, distrusted his gardener's judgment.
The coat and hat and gloves, even the whiskers and head of hair, might
have belonged to a gentleman; but not, as he thought, the mouth or the
eyes or the hands. And when the man began to speak there was a mixture
of assurance and intended complaisance, an effected familiarity and an
attempt at ease, which made the master of the house quite sure that his
guest was not all that Darvell had represented. The man soon told his
story. His name was Bollum, Richard Bollum, and he had connections
with Australia;--was largely concerned in Australian gold-mines. When
Caldigate heard this, he looked round involuntarily to see whether the
door was closed. 'We're tiled, of course,' said Bollum. Caldigate with
a frown nodded his head, and Bollum went on. He hadn't come there,
he said, to speak of some recent troubles of which he had heard. He
wasn't the man to shove his nose into other people's matters. It was
nothing to him who was married to whom. Caldigate shivered, but sat
and listened in silence. But Mr. Bollum had had dealings,--many
dealings,--with Timothy Crinkett. Indeed he was ready to say that
Timothy Crinkett was his uncle. He was not particularly proud of his
uncle, but nevertheless Timothy Crinkett was his uncle. Didn't Mr.
Caldigate think that something ought to be done for Timothy Crinkett?

'Yes, I do,' said Caldigate, finding himself compelled to say something
at the moment, and feeling that he could say so much with positive
truth.

Then Bollum continued his story, showing that he knew all the
circumstances of Polyeuka. 'It was hard on them, wasn't it, Mr.
Caldigate?'

'I think it was.'

'Every rap they had among them, Mr. Caldigate! You left them as bare as
the palm of my hand!'

'It was not my doing. I simply made him an offer, which every one at the
time believed to be liberal.'

'Just so. We grants all that. But still you got all their money;--old
pals of yours too, as they say out there.'

'It is a matter of most intense regret