t to do the handsome: they say that this barrister chap's
right down convinced that Harborough's innocent. It must be Bent's
brass!"

"What's Popsie say?" asked one of the younger members of the party,
winking at the barmaid, who, having supplied her customers' needs, was
leaning over a copy of the handbill which somebody had laid on the bar.
"Whose brass can it be, Popsie?"

The barmaid stood up, seized a glass and a cloth, and began to polish
the glass with vigor.

"What's Popsie say?" she repeated. "Why, what she says is that you're a
lot of donkeys for wasting your time in wondering whose brass it is.
What does it matter whose brass it is, so long as it's safe? What you
want to do is to try and earn it. You don't pick up five hundred pounds
every day!"

"She's right!" said some man of the group. "But--how does anybody start
on to them games?"

"There'll be plenty o' starters, for all that, my lads!" observed the
little tradesman. "Never you fear! There'll be candidates."

Stoner drank off his ale and went away. Usually, being given to gossip,
he stopped chatting with anybody he chanced to meet until it was close
upon his supper-time. But the last remark sent him off. For Stoner meant
to be a starter, and he had no desire that anybody should get away in
front of him.

The lodging in which Stoner kept his bachelor state was a quiet and
eminently respectable one. He had two small rooms, a parlour and a
bedchamber, in the house of a widow with whom he had lodged ever since
his first coming to Highmarket, nearly six years before. In the tiny
parlour he kept a few books and a writing-desk, and on those evenings
which he did not spend in playing cards or billiards, he did a little
intellectual work in the way of improving his knowledge of French,
commercial arithmetic, and business correspondence. And that night, his
supper being eaten, and the door closed upon his landlady, he lighted
his pipe, sat down to his desk, unlocked one of its drawers, and from an
old file-box drew out some papers. One of these, a half-sheet of ruled
foolscap, he laid in front of him, the rest he put back. And then,
propping his chin on his folded hands, Stoner gave that half-sheet a
long, speculative inspection.

If anybody had looked over Stoner's shoulder they would have seen him
gazing at a mass of figures. The half-sheet of foolscap was covered with
figures: the figuring extended to the reverse side. And--what a
looker-on might no