‘Say!  Mr. Myatt,’ he exclaimed with sudden gruffness, ’do you suggest that John Stanway didn’t do my father right?’

’My lad, I’m doing no suggesting....  You can keep the book if you’ve a mind to.  I’ve said nothing to no one, and if I had not met you in Liverpool, and you hadn’t told me that your sister was poorly off again, happen I should ha’ been mum to my grave.  But that’s how things turn out.’

‘He’s your own nephew, you know,’ said Twemlow.

‘Ay!’ said the old man, ‘I know that.  What by that?  Fair’s fair.’

Meshach’s tone, frigidly jocular, almost frightened the American.

‘According to you,’ said he, determined to put the thing into words, ’your nephew robbed my father each year of sums varying from one to three hundred pounds—­that’s what it comes to.’

’Nay, not according to me—­according to that book, and what your father told your sister Alice,’ Meshach corrected.

‘But why should he do it?  That’s what I want to know.’

‘Look here,’ said Meshach quietly, resuming his chair.  ’John’s as good a man of business as you’d meet in a day’s march.  But never sin’ he handled money could he keep off stocks and shares.  He speculates, always has, always will.  And now you know it—­and ’tisn’t everybody as does, either.’

‘Then you think——­’

‘Nay, my lad, I don’t,’ said Meshach curtly.

‘But what ought I to do?’

Meshach cackled in laughter.  ‘Ask your sister Alice,’ he replied, ’it’s her as is interested, not you.  You aren’t in the will.’

‘But I don’t want to ruin John Stanway,’ Twemlow protested.

‘Ruin John!’ Meshach exclaimed, cackling again.  ’Not you!  We mun have no scandals in th’ family.  But you can go and see him, quiet-like, I reckon.  Dost think as John’ll be stuck fast for six or seven hundred, or eight hundred?  Not John!  And happen a bit of money’ll come in handy to th’ old parson tea-blender, by all accounts.’

‘Suppose my father—­made some mistake—­forgot?’

‘Ay!’ said Meshach calmly.  ‘Suppose he did.  And suppose he didna’.’

‘I believe I’ll go and talk to Stanway,’ said Twemlow, putting the book in his pocket.  ‘Let me see.  The works is down at Shawport?’

‘On th’ cut,’[2] said Meshach.

  [2] Cut = canal.

’I can say Alice had asked me to look at the accounts.  Oh!  Perhaps I can straighten it out neat——­’ He spoke cheerfully, then stopped.  ’But it’s fifteen years ago!’

‘Fifteen!’ said Meshach with gravity.

‘I’m d——­d if I can make you out!’ thought Twemlow as he walked along King Street towards the steam-tram for Knype, where he was staying at the Five Towns Hotel.  Hannah had sped him, with blushings, and rustlings of silk, from Meshach’s door.  ’I’m d——­d if I can make you out, Meshach.’  He said it aloud.  And yet, so complex and self-contradictory is the mind’s action under certain circumstances, he could make out Meshach perfectly well; he could discern clearly that Meshach had been actuated partly by the love of chicane, partly by a quasi-infantile curiosity to see what he should see, and partly by an almost biblical sense of justice, a sense blind, callous, cruel.