mping just the least bit in the world," said
Louis, whose tact was instinctive and indestructible.

"Oh, _that_!" said Horrocleave, as though nothing was farther
from his mind than the peculiarity of his gait that morning. He bit
his lip.

"Slipped over something?" Louis suggested.

"Aye!" said Horrocleave, somewhat less ominously, and began to open
his letters.

Louis saw that he had done well to feign ignorance of the sprain and
to assume that Horrocleave had slipped, whereas in fact Horrocleave
had put his foot through a piece of rotten wood. Everybody in the
works, upon pain of death, would have to pretend that the employer had
merely slipped, and that the consequences were negligible. Horrocleave
had already nearly eaten an old man alive for the sin of asking
whether he had hurt himself!

And he had not hurt himself because two days previously he had
ferociously stopped the odd-man of the works from wasting his time in
mending just that identical stair, and had asserted that the stair was
in excellent condition. Horrocleave, though Napoleonic by disposition,
had a provincial mind, even a Five Towns mind. He regarded as sheer
loss any expenditure on repairs or renewals or the processes of
cleansing. His theory was that everything would "do" indefinitely. He
passed much of his time in making things "do." His confidence in the
theory that things could indeed be made to "do" was usually justified,
but the steps from the painting-shop--a gimcrack ladder with
hand-rail, attached somehow externally to a wall--had at length
betrayed it. That the accident had happened to himself, and not to a
lad balancing a plankful of art-lustre ware on one shoulder, was sheer
luck. And now the odd-man, with the surreptitious air of one engaged
in a nefarious act, was putting a new tread on the stairs. Thus
devoutly are the Napoleonic served!

Horrocleave seemed to weary of his correspondence.

"By the by," he said in a strange tone, "let's have a look at that
petty-cash book."

Louis rose, and with all his charm, with all the elegance of a man
intended by Nature for wealth and fashion instead of a slave on a foul
pot-bank, gave up the book. It was like giving up hope to the last
vestige, like giving up the ghost. He saw with horrible clearness that
he had been deceiving himself, that Horrocleave's ruthless eye could
not fail to discern at the first glance all his neat dodges, such as
additions of ten to the shillings, and even