They explained to him the wonderful ways of compound interest, and though he couldn’t see ’em, he had to feel ’em, and he found, as time passed, that far from paying off William’s five hundred, do what he might the money still piled up against him.  There was complications, too, for of course he had no other secret than this from his wife, and Milly read him like a book, and after they was wed four years, Jo reached a pitch when he couldn’t conceal his anguish.  For presently, puzzling over the figures for the hundredth time, he came to the fearful conclusion that he’d already paid William over five hundred pounds, and yet, if White was to be trusted, there was three figures of money still owing to him by compound interest.

He had it out with William the next time he got him alone; but the horseman declared himself as a good bit surprised that a little thing like cash should fret such a happy and prosperous creature as Jonas Bird.

“Good powers!” he said, “haven’t you found out that Milly was worth all the money in the Bank of England?  And then to grouse because you bain’t out of debt for her!  Hell!” said William White, “you needn’t think I wouldn’t be off the bargain to-morrow and gladly pay you all the money twice over for Milly back again!”

Because, you see, his Daisy, though a nice girl up to a point, was very human in some things and had failed, both as a wife and a mother, owing to her fatal fondness for liquid refreshment.  ’Twas a family weakness which had been kept out of William’s knowledge while he was courting; but marriage and the cares of childer and so on, had woke a thirst in Daisy that made her difficult.  So William weren’t in a mood to lighten up for Jonas, and he said that figures can’t lie and the loan must run its appointed course if it took ten years to do so.  He’d got the whip-hand, no doubt, because it weren’t a subject for any other ear, though Jonas, in his despair, did once think of going to parson with it.  But the thought of laying bare the past and seeing parson’s scorn was more than he could face, and he hid it up.

At last, however, he felt the tax past bearing, for it was making an old man of him; and then he braced himself and called on his Maker to see him through and done the wisest thing that ever he had done.  In a word, he told Milly.  He told her when they’d gone to bed one Christmas night and unbosomed his troubled mind.  He’d paid William another fifty only the week night before and, as he presently confessed to Milly, ’twas the last straw that broke his back and sent him to throw himself on her mercy.

He bade her list, then told the tale from the beginning, told it honest without straining truth in any particular.  And Milly listened and said not a word till he was done.

“So there it is,” finished Jonas—­“a choice of evils for me ’twixt stripping up the past afore your eyes and letting William bleed me to my dying day seemingly.  And knowing you, I reckoned the wisest thing was to come to you with the naked tale and hide naught.  William says figures can’t lie, and he may or may not be right, but I’ve got it fixed in my mind that he’s making ’em lie; and, be it as it will, he’s had enough, and I’m properly sick of putting big money in his pocket instead of yours, where all that is mine belongs by right.”