retire, and Twemlow decided to do so, receiving one-third of the net profits of the partnership business during life.  In two years he was bedridden and the miserable victim of a housekeeper; but, though both Alice and Arthur attempted reconciliation, some fine point of conscience obliged him to ignore their overtures.  John Stanway, his last remaining friend, called often and chatted about business, which he lamented was far from being what it ought to be.  Twemlow’s death was hastened by a fire at the works; it happened that he could see the flames from his bedroom window; he survived the spectacle five days.  Before entering into his reward, the great pietist wrote letters of forgiveness to Alice and Arthur, and made a will, of which John Stanway was sole executor, in favour of Alice.  The town expressed surprise when it learnt that the estate was sworn at less than a thousand pounds, for the dead man’s share in the profits of Twemlow & Stanway was no secret, and Stanway had been living in splendour at Hillport for several years.  John, when questioned by gossips, referred sadly to Alice’s husband and to the depredations of housekeepers.  In this manner the name and memory of the Twemlows were apparently extinguished in Bursley.

But Meshach Myatt had witnessed the fire at the works; he had even remained by the canal side all through that illuminated night; and an adventure had occurred to him such as occurs only to the Meshach Myatts of this world.  The fire was threatening the office, and Meshach saw his nephew John running to a place of refuge with a drawer snatched out of an American desk; the drawer was loaded with papers and books, and as John ran a small book fell unheeded to the ground.  Meshach cried out to John that he had dropped something, but in the excitement and confusion of the fire his rather high-pitched voice was not heard.  He left the book lying where it fell; half-an-hour afterwards he saw it again, picked it up, and put it in his pocket.  It contained some interesting informal private memoranda of the annual profits of the firm.  Now Meshach did not return the book to its owner.  He argued that John deserved to suffer for his carelessness in losing it, that John ought to have heard his call, and that anyhow John would surely inquire for it and might then be allowed to receive it with a few remarks upon the need of a calm demeanour at fires; but John never did inquire for it.

When William Twemlow’s will was proved a few weeks later, Meshach Myatt made no comment whatever.  From time to time he heard news of Arthur Twemlow:  that he had set up in New York as an earthenware and glassware factor, that he was doing well, that he was doing extremely well, that his buyer had come over to visit the more aristocratic manufactories at Knype and Cauldon, that some one from Bursley had met Arthur at the Leipzig Easter Fair and reported him stout, taciturn, and Americanised.  Then, one morning in Lord Street, Liverpool, fifteen years after