them, and the glance of baffled rage which
swept across his features was not observed.

"They are quite right," he said, rising from his chair; "and here is
your receipt."

"Very Good! And now, Hornby, let us have a glass of wine together for the
sake of old times. Well, well; you need not look so fierce about it. Let
bygones be bygones, I say. Oh, if you _will_ go--go in God's name!
Good-night!"

"Good-night!"

"Baffled--foiled!" muttered Hornby as he rode homeward. "Where could he
get the money? Borrowed it, doubtless, but of whom? Well,
patience--patience! I shall grip thee yet, Henry Burton!" And the
possessed man turned round in his saddle, and shook his clenched hand in
the direction of the house he had quitted. He then steadily pursued his
way, and soon regained his hermitage.

The month for which Burton had borrowed the two hundred and fifty pounds
passed rapidly--as months always do to borrowers--and expedient after
expedient for raising the money was tried in vain. This money must be
repaid, Kirkshaw had emphatically told him, on the day stipulated. Burton
applied to the bank at Leeds, with which he usually did business, to
discount an acceptance, guaranteed by one or two persons whose names he
mentioned. The answer was the usual civil refusal to accept the proffered
security for repayment--"the bank was just then full of discounts."
Burton ventured, as a last resource, to call on Hornby with a request
that, as the rapid advance in the market-value of land consequent on the
high war-prices obtained for its produce, had greatly increased the worth
of Grange Farm, he would add the required sum to the already-existing
mortgage. He was met by a prompt refusal. Mr. Hornby intended to
foreclose as speedily as possible the mortgages he already held, and
invest his capital in more profitable securities. "Well, then--would he
lend the amount at any interest he chose?"

"The usury laws," replied Hornby, with his usual saturnine sneer, "would
prevent my acceptance of your obliging offer, even if I had the present
means, which I have not. My spare cash happens just now to be temporarily
locked up."

Burton, half-crazed with anxiety, went the following day to the Leeds
bank with the proffer of a fresh name agreed to be lent him by its
owner. Useless! "They did not know the party." The applicant mused a
few moments, and then said, "Would you discount the note of Mr. James
Hornby of Pool?"

"Certainly; with a gre