.
But I meant to pay it, whether he did or not. That's the whole story.
I never meant to embezzle money, and I'm not the man to do it. You
never knew me do a dishonest trick, sir."

"Where's Dunsey, then? What do you stand talking there for? Go and
fetch Dunsey, as I tell you, and let him give account of what he wanted
the money for, and what he's done with it. He shall repent it. I'll
turn him out. I said I would, and I'll do it. He shan't brave me. Go
and fetch him."

"Dunsey isn't come back, sir."

"What! did he break his own neck, then?" said the Squire, with some
disgust at the idea that, in that case, he could not fulfil his threat.

"No, he wasn't hurt, I believe, for the horse was found dead, and
Dunsey must have walked off. I daresay we shall see him again
by-and-by. I don't know where he is."

"And what must you be letting him have my money for? Answer me that,"
said the Squire, attacking Godfrey again, since Dunsey was not within
reach.

"Well, sir, I don't know," said Godfrey, hesitatingly. That was a
feeble evasion, but Godfrey was not fond of lying, and, not being
sufficiently aware that no sort of duplicity can long flourish without
the help of vocal falsehoods, he was quite unprepared with invented
motives.

"You don't know? I tell you what it is, sir. You've been up to some
trick, and you've been bribing him not to tell," said the Squire, with
a sudden acuteness which startled Godfrey, who felt his heart beat
violently at the nearness of his father's guess. The sudden alarm
pushed him on to take the next step--a very slight impulse suffices for
that on a downward road.

"Why, sir," he said, trying to speak with careless ease, "it was a
little affair between me and Dunsey; it's no matter to anybody else.
It's hardly worth while to pry into young men's fooleries: it wouldn't
have made any difference to you, sir, if I'd not had the bad luck to
lose Wildfire. I should have paid you the money."

"Fooleries! Pshaw! it's time you'd done with fooleries. And I'd have
you know, sir, you _must_ ha' done with 'em," said the Squire, frowning
and casting an angry glance at his son. "Your goings-on are not what I
shall find money for any longer. There's my grandfather had his
stables full o' horses, and kept a good house, too, and in worse times,
by what I can make out; and so might I, if I hadn't four
good-for-nothing fellows to hang on me like horse-leeches. I've been
too good a