considerable a sum of money? This mental inquiry naturally set young Mr.
Barter to work to discover how considerable the sum of money actually
was. He laid the notes upon the table, and tried to wet his thumb upon
his lips. There was no moisture there, and his mouth was as dry as
touchwood. He drank a little water, and then began to count the notes.
He made them eighty-one at first; and then, recounting, made them
seventy-nine. Counting them a third time, he made them eighty.

'Damn it all!' said young Mr. Barter, 'can't I count? I suppose the old
buffer will come back for them.' He tried a fourth time, and confirmed
his third counting. 'They'll get stopped at the Bank,' he said. 'They'll
be no use to anybody.' He sat for a while thinking, with his eyes
half-closed, drumming out a tune upon the table with the tips of his
fat white fingers, then he folded the notes with great precision
and delicacy, put them into his pocket, found his hat, overcoat, and
walking-stick, and made ready for the streets. In the quiet of these
legal chambers many chance noises from without had from time to time
been clearly audible. He heard now a hurrying step upon the pavement of
the quadrangle, and, with a palpitation at the heart, he moved swiftly
to put out the light, and listened. The step stumbled at the entrance to
the staircase, at the foot of which the outer door stood closed. Young
Mr. Barter's heart beat, if possible, faster than before; and the veins
in his head so throbbed, that only the confining rim of his hat seemed
to keep his head itself from bursting. There came an eager summons at
the door, an imperative rapping with the head of a stout walking-stick.
He set his teeth, and, drawing back his lips with a horrible smile
in the dark, breathed noiselessly. The rapping grew more and more
imperative and urgent, and then came a preternatural silence, with an
undercurrent of distant sound in it, and the sudden blare of a cornet in
the street, which sounded to his nerves like the trumpet of the herald
of the day of judgment He heard the hurrying feet plunge down the steps
again, and cross the quadrangle, and listened until their sound merged
into the dull noises of the London night. He stood in the dark after
this for what seemed a long time, learning that his features twitched,
and teaching himself to control them. Then he left his chambers with
great secrecy, and broke into a cold sweat to think, as he stood half
through the doorwa