ngs from sales), while Quarriar only gave him as his share of
the profits for the whole of the five weeks the sum of seventeen
shillings, instead of the minimum of ten shillings each week that had
been arranged.

The partner insisted further that he had never handled any money (of
which Quarriar had always retained full control), and that all the
goods in the cellar at the time of the quarrel were only of the value
of ten shillings, to which he was entitled, as Quarriar still owed him
thirty-three shillings. Moreover, he was willing to repeat in
Quarriar's presence the lies the latter had tried to persuade him to
tell. As to the children, he challenged Quarriar to produce them.

In vain I attempted to grapple with these conflicting documents. My
head was in a whirl. It seemed to me that no judicial bench, however
eminent, could, from the bare materials presented, probe to the bottom
of this matter. The arithmetic of both parties was hopelessly beyond
me. The names of the witnesses introduced showed that there must be
two camps, and that certainly Quarriar was solidly encamped amid his
advisers.

The whole business was taking on a most painful complexion, and I was
torn by conflicting emotions and swayed alternately by suspicion and
confidence.

How sift the false from the true amid all this tangled mass? And yet
mere curiosity would not leave me content to go to my grave not
knowing whether my model was apostle or Ananias. I, too, must then
become a rag-sorter, dabbling amid dirty fragments. Was there a black
rag, and was there a white, or were both rags parti-coloured? To take
only the one point of the children, it would seem a very simple matter
to determine whether a man has five daughters or two; and yet the more
I looked into it, the more I saw the complexity. Even if three little
girls were produced for my inspection, it was utterly impossible for
me to tell whether they really were the model's. Nor was it open to me
to repeat the device of Solomon and have them hacked in two to see
whose heart would be moved.

And then, if Israel's story was false here, what of the rest? Was
Kazelia also a myth? Did the second daughter ever go to Hamburg? Was
the landlord's detaining me in the parlour a ruse to gain time for the
attics to be emptied of any comforts? Where were the silver
candlesticks? These and other questions surged up torturingly. But I
remembered the footsore figure on the Brighton pavement; I remembered