, one can't count one's shillings when one has such a job as
this in hand. Clench your nail;--that's what I say; be it even so.
Clench your nail;--that's what you've got to do."

"I dare say we shan't quarrel about the money, Mr. Bozzle."

"Oh dear no. I find I never has any words about the money. But
there's that one question. There's a young Mr. Stanbury has gone
down, as knows all about it. What's he up to?"

"He's my particular friend," said Trevelyan.

"Oh--h. He do know all about it, then?"

"We needn't talk about that, if you please, Mr. Bozzle."

"Because there was words between him and the Colonel upon the
platform;--and very angry words. The young man went at the Colonel
quite open-mouthed,--savage-like. It's not the way such things should
be done, Mr. Trewillian; and though of course it's not for me to
speak;--she's your lady,--still, when you has got a thing of this
kind in hand, one head is better than a dozen. As for myself,
Mr. Trewillian, I never wouldn't look at a case,--not if I knew
it,--unless I was to have it all to myself. But of course there was
no bargain, and so I says nothing."

After considerable delay the bill was made out on the spot, Mr.
Bozzle copying down the figures painfully from his memorandum-book,
with his head much inclined on one side. Trevelyan asked him, almost
in despair, to name the one sum; but this Bozzle declined to do,
saying that right was right. He had a scale of pilfering of his own,
to which he had easily reconciled his conscience; and beyond that
he prided himself on the honesty of his accounts. At last the bill
was made out, was paid, and Bozzle was gone. Trevelyan, when he was
alone, threw himself back on a sofa, and almost wept in despair. To
what a depth of degradation had he not been reduced!

CHAPTER XXIV.

NIDDON PARK.

As Hugh Stanbury went over to Lessboro', and from thence to Nuncombe
Putney, he thought more of himself and Nora Rowley than he did of Mr.
and Mrs. Trevelyan. As to Mrs. Trevelyan and Colonel Osborne, he felt
that he knew everything that it was necessary that he should know.
The man had been there, and had seen Mrs. Trevelyan. Of that there
could be no doubt. That Colonel Osborne had been wickedly indifferent
to the evil consequences of such a visit, and that all the women
concerned had been most foolish in permitting him to make it, was his
present conviction. But he did not for a moment doubt that the visit
had in itself be