The manager smiled, and looked very hard at the bulge in his visitor’s breast pocket, a look which involuntarily made the old man change the position of his hooked stick by bringing it down across his breast as if to protect the contents.

“Now, my dear Mr Gemp, you do not expect an answer to that question. Do you suppose I have ever told anybody that you have been here three times to ask me whether Dixons’ would advance you a hundred pounds at five per cent?”

“On good security, eh?” interposed the old man sharply; “only on good security.”

“Exactly, my dear sir. Why, you don’t suppose we make advances without?”

“No, of course not, eh? Not to anybody, eh, Mr Hallam?” said the old man eagerly. “You could not oblige me now with a hundred, say at seven and a half? I’m a safe man, you know. Say at seven and a half per cent, on my note of hand. You wouldn’t, would you?”

“No, Mr Gemp, nor yet at ten per cent. Dixons’ are not usurers, sir. I can let you have a hundred, sir, any time you like, upon good security, deeds or the like, but not without.”

“Ha! you are particular. Good way of doing business, sir. Hey, but I like you to be strict.”

“It is the only safe way of conducting business, Mr Gemp.”

“I say, though – oh, you are close! – close as a cash-box, Mr Hallam, sir; but what do you think of the new parson?”

“Quiet, pleasant, gentlemanly young man, Mr Gemp.”

“Yes, yes,” cried the visitor, hurting himself by using his crook quite violently, and getting it back round his neck; “but a mere boy, sir, a mere boy. He’s driven me away. I’m not going to church to hear him while there’s a chapel. I want to know what the bishop was a thinking about.”

“Ah? but he’s a scholar and a gentleman, Mr Gemp,” said the manager, blandly.

“Tchuck! so was the young doctor who set up and only lasted a year. If you were ill, sir, you wouldn’t have gone to he; you’d have gone to Dr Luttrell. If I’ve got vallerable deeds to deposit, I don’t go to some young clever-shakes who sets up in business, and calls himself a banker: I come to Dixons’.”

“And so you have some valuable deeds you want us to take care of for you, Mr Gemp,” said the manager sharply.

“Eh! I didn’t say so, did I?”

“Yes; and you want a hundred pounds. Shall I look at the deeds?”

Mr Gemp brought his oaken crook down over his breast, and his quick, shifty eyes turned from the manager to the lethal weapons over the chimney, then to the safe, then to the bank, and Mr Thickens’s back.

“I say,” he said at last, “arn’t you scared about being robbed?”

“Robbed! oh, dear no. Come, Mr Gemp. I must bring you to the point. Let me look at the deeds you have in your pocket; perhaps there will be no need to send them to our solicitor. A hundred pounds, didn’t you say?”

The old man hesitated, and looked about suspiciously for a few moments before meeting the manager’s eyes. Then he succumbed before the firm, keen, searching look.

“Yes,” he said slowly, “I said a hundred pounds, but I don’t want no hundred pounds. I want you – ”

He paused for a few moments with his hands at his breast, as if to take a long breath, and then, as if by a tremendous wrench, he mastered his fear and suspicion.

“I want you to take care of these for me.”

He tore open his breast and brought out quickly a couple of dirty yellow parchments and some slips of paper, roughly bound in a little leather folio.

The manager stretched his hand across the table and took hold of the parchments; but the old man held on by one corner for a few moments till Hallam raised his eyebrows and smiled, when the visitor uttered a deep sigh, and thrust parchments and little folio hastily from him.

“Lock ’em up in yonder iron safe,” he said hoarsely, taking up his blue handkerchief to wipe his brow. “It’s open now, but you’ll keep it locked, won’t you?”

“The deeds will be safe, Mr Gemp,” said the manager coolly throwing open the parchment. “Ah! I see, the conveyances to a row of certain messuages.”

“Yes, sir; row of houses, Gemp’s Terrace, all my own, sir; not a penny on ’em.”

“And these? Ah, I see, bank-warrants. Quite right, my dear sir, they will be safe. And you do not need an advance?”

“Tchuck! what should I want with an advance? There’s a good fifteen hundred pound there – all my own. Now you give me a writing, saying you’ve got ’em to hold for me, and that will do.”

The manager smiled as he wrote out the document, while Mr Gemp, who seemed as much relieved as if he had been eased of an aching tooth, rose to make a closer inspection of the loaded pistols and the bell-mouthed brass blunderbuss, all of which he tapped gently in turn with the hook of his stick.

“There you are, Mr Gemp,” said the manager smiling. “Now you can go home and feel at rest, for your deeds and warrants will be secure.”

“Yes, sir, to be sure; that’s the way,” said the old man, hastily reading the memorandum, and then placing it in a very old leather pocket-book; “but if you wouldn’t mind, sir, Mr Hallam, sir, I should like to see you lock them all in yonder.”

“Well, then, you shall,” said the manager good-humouredly and taking up the packets he tied them together with some green ferret, swung open the heavy door, which creaked upon its pivots, stepped inside, turned a key with a rattle, and opened a large iron chest, into which he threw the deeds, shut the lid with a clang, locked it ostentatiously, took out the key, backed out, and then closed and locked the great door of the safe.

“There, Mr Gemp; I think you’ll find they are secure now.”

“Safe! safe as the bank!” said the old man with an admiring smile as, with a sigh of relief, he picked up his old rough beaver hat from the floor, stuck it on rather sidewise, and with a short “good-morning,” stamped out, tapping the floor as he went.

“Good-morning, Mr Thickens, sir,” he said, pausing at the outer door to look back over his shoulder at the clerk. “I’ve done my bit o’ business with the manager. It’s all right.”

“Good-morning, Mr Gemp,” said Thickens quietly; and then to himself, as the tap of the stick was heard going down the street, “An important old idiot!”

Several little pieces of business were transacted, and then, according to routine, the manager came behind the counter to relieve his lieutenant, who put on his hat and went to his dinner.

During his absence the manager took his place at his subordinate’s desk, and was very busy making a few calculations, after divers references to a copy of yesterday’s Times, which came regularly by coach.

These calculations made him thoughtful, and he was in the middle of one when his face changed, and turned of a strange waxen hue, but he recovered himself directly.

“Might have expected it,” he said softly; and he went on writing as some one entered the bank.

The visitor was a thin, dejected-looking youth of about two-and-twenty, shabbily dressed in clothes that did not fit him. His face was of a sickly pallor, as if he had just risen from an invalid couch, an idea strengthened by the extremely shortly-cut hair, whose deficiency was made the more manifest by his wearing a hat a full size too large. This was drawn down closely over his forehead, his pressed-out ears acting as brackets to keep it from going lower still.

He was a tamed-down, feeble-looking being, but the spirit was not all gone, for as he came down the street, with the genial friendliness of all dogs towards one who seems to be a stranger and down in the world, Miss Heathery’s fat, ill-conditioned terrier, that she pampered under the belief that it was a dog of good breed, being in an evil temper consequent upon not having been taken for a walk by its mistress, rushed out baying, barking, and snapping at the stranger’s heels.

“Get out, will you?” he shouted; but the dog barked the more, and the stranger looked as if about to run. In fact he did run a few yards, but, as the dog followed, he caught up a flower-pot from a handy window-sill – every one had flower-pots at King’s Castor – and hurled it at the dog.

There was a yell, a crash, and explosion as if of a shell; Miss Heathery’s dog fled, and, without waiting to encounter the owner of the flower-pot, the stranger hurried round the corner, and after an inquiry or two, made for the bank.

“Vicious little beast! Wish I’d killed it,” he grumbled, giving the hat a hoist behind which necessitated another in front, and then the equilibrium adjusting at the sides. “Wonder people keep dogs,” he continued. “A nuisance. Wish I was a dog – somebody’s dog, and well fed. Lead a regular dog’s life, and get none of the bones. Perhaps I shall, though, now.”

The young man looked anything but a bank customer, but he did not hesitate. Merely stopping to give his coat a drag down, and then, tilting his hat slightly, he entered with a swagger, and walked up to the broad counter. Upon this he rested a gloveless hand, an act which seemed to give a little more steadiness to his weak frame.

“Rob,” he said.

The manager raised his head with an affected start.

“Oh, you don’t know me, eh?” said the visitor. “Well, I s’pose I am a bit changed.”

“Know you? You wish to see me?” said Hallam coolly.

“Yes, Mr Robert Hallam; I’ve come down from London on purpose. I couldn’t come before,” he added meaningly, “but now I want to have a talk with you.”

“Stephen Crellock! Why, you are changed.”

“Yes, as aforesaid.”

“Well, sir. What is it you want with me?” said the manager coldly.

“What do I want with you, eh? Oh, come, that’s rich! You’re a lucky one, you are. I go to prison, and you get made manager down here. Ah! you see I know all about it.”

“I do not understand you, sir.”

“Then I’ll tell you, my fine fellow. Some men never get found out, some do; that’s the difference between us two. I’ve gone to the wall – inside it,” he added, with a sickly grin. “You’ve got to be quite the gentleman. But they’ll find you out some day.”

“Well, sir, what is this to lead up to?” said Hallam.

“Oh, I say though, Rob Hallam, this is too rich. Manager here, and going, they say, to marry the prettiest girl in the place.” Hallam started in spite of his self-command. “And I suppose I shall be asked to the wedding, shan’t I?”

“Will you be so good as to explain what is the object of this visit?” said Hallam coldly.

“Why, can’t you see? I’ve come to the bank because I want some money. There, you need not look like that, my lad. It’s my turn now, and you’ve got to put things a bit straight for me after what I suffered sooner than speak.”

“Do you mean you have come here to insult me and make me send for a constable?” cried Hallam.

“Yes, if you like,” said the young man, leaning forward, and gazing full in the manager’s face; “send for one if you like. But you don’t like, Robert Hallam. There, I’m a man of few words. I’ve suffered a deal just through being true to my mate, and now you’ve got to make it up to me.”

“You scoun – ”

“Sh! That’ll do. Just please yourself, my fine fellow; only, if you don’t play fair towards the man who let things go against him without a word, I shall just go round the town and say – ”

“Silence, you scoundrel!” cried Hallam fiercely; and he caught his unpleasant visitor by the arm.

Just then James Thickens entered, as quietly as a shadow, taking everything in at a glance, but without evincing any surprise.

“Think yourself lucky, sir,” continued Hallam aloud, “that I do not have you locked up. Mr Thickens, see this man off the premises.”

Then, in a whisper that his visitor alone could hear, and with a meaning look:

“Be quiet and go. Come to my rooms to-night.”