The timber-merchant stood with legs slightly apart, holding his stick and the riding-whip horizontally with both hands.  His eyes were fixed upon young Mr. Daffy, and his lips moved in rather an ominous way; but he made no reply to Charles’s smiling remark.

‘Mr. Lott,’ said the tailor, in a voice still broken by pants and coughs, ‘will you speak or me?  Will you say what you think of him?’

‘You’ll have to be quick about it,’ interposed Charles, with a glance at his watch.  ’I can give you five minutes; you can say a lot in that time, if you’re sound of wind.’

The timber-merchant’s eyes were very wide, and his cheeks unusually red.  Abruptly he turned to Mr. Daffy.

‘Do you know my idea?’

But just as he spoke there sounded a knock at the door, and the smart maidservant cried out that a gentleman wished to see her master.

‘Who is it?’ asked Charles.

The answer came from the visitor himself, who, pushing the servant aside, broke into the room.  It was a young man of no very distinguished appearance, thin, red-haired, with a pasty complexion and a scrubby moustache; his clothes were approaching shabbiness, and he had an unwashed look, due in part to hasty travel on this hot day.  Streaming with sweat, his features distorted with angry excitement, he shouted as he entered, ‘You’ve got to see me, Daffy; I won’t be refused!’ In the same moment his glance discovered the two visitors, and he stopped short.  ’Mr. Lott, you here?  I’m glad of it—­I’m awfully glad of it.  I couldn’t have wished anything better.  I don’t know who this other gentleman is, but it doesn’t matter.  I’m glad to have witnesses—­I’m infernally glad!  Mr. Lott, you’ve been to my house this morning; you know what’s happened there.  I had to go out of town yesterday, and this Daffy, this cursed liar and swindler, used the opportunity to sell up my furniture.  He’ll tell you he had a legal right.  But he gave me his word not to do anything till the end of the month.  And, in any case, I don’t really owe him half the sum he has down against me.  I’ve paid that black-hearted scoundrel hundreds of pounds—­honourably paid him—­debts of honour, and now he has the face to charge me sixty per cent, on money I was fool enough to borrow from him!  Sixty per cent.—­what do you think of that, Mr. Lott?  What do you think of it, sir?’

‘I’m sorry to say it doesn’t at all surprise me,’ answered Mr. Daffy, who perceived that the speaker was Mr. Lott’s son-in-law.  ’But I can’t sympathise with you very much.  If you have dealings with a book-maker—­’

‘A blackleg, a blackleg!’ shouted Bowles.  ’Bookmakers are respectable men in comparison with him.  He’s bled me, the brute!  He tempted me on and on—­ Look here, Mr. Lott, I know as well as you do that I’ve been an infernal fool.  I’ve had my eyes opened—­now that it’s too late.  I hear my wife told you that, and I’m glad she did.  I’ve