my mind for other reasons. Besides, I had to talk to Uvo
about something, since he was down with a quinsy caught from the perfect
sanitation in advertised vogue on the Estate, and could hardly open his
own mouth. And perhaps I had to talk to somebody about the unpleasant
duty hanging over me in connection with this fellow Nettleton, who had
taken his house about the same time as Colonel Cheffins and his gang,
had made up to Delavoye over that affair, and was himself almost as
undesirable a tenant from my point of view.

"I know he's a friend of yours, and I haven't come to curse him to your
face," I had been saying. "But if you would just tell Nettleton, when
you see him again, that we're in dead earnest this time, you might be
doing both him and us a service. I sent him a final demand yesterday; if
he doesn't pay up within the week, my orders are to distrain without
further notice. Muskett's furious about the whole thing. He blames me
for ever having truck with such a fellow in the first instance. But when
a man has been science beak in a public school--and _such_ a school--it
sounds good enough for Witching Hill, doesn't it? Who would have thought
he'd had the sack? Public-school masters don't often get it."

"They've got to do something pretty desperate first, I fancy," whispered
Uvo, with a gleam in his sunken eyes. He had not denied the fact. I felt
encouraged to elaborate my grievance against Edgar Nettleton.

"Besides, I had his banker's reference. That was all right; yet we had
trouble to get our very first rent, more trouble over the second, and
this time there's going to be a devil of a row. I shouldn't wonder if
Nettleton had a bill of sale over every stick. I know he's owing all the
tradesmen. He may be a very clever chap, and all that, but I can't help
saying that he strikes me as a bit of a wrong 'un, Uvo."

Of course I had not started with the intention of saying quite so much.
But the brunt of the unpleasantness was falling on my shoulders; and the
fellow had made friends with my friend, whose shoes he was not fit to
black. Uvo, moreover, was still according me a patient, interested
hearing, as he lay like a bright-eyed log in his bed at the top of No.
7. Altogether it was not in my allowance of human nature to lose such an
opportunity of showing him his new friend in his true colours.

"He _is_ clever," whispered Uvo, as though that was the bond between
them. "He knows something about everything, and