Mr Watts looked at the bill, turned it over, and dogs-eared it with his fingers.  ‘It will keep you a day or two?’ he said, repeating the old man’s words.  ‘You have no other money with you?’

‘Some trifling change,’ responded Joseph.  ‘Nothing to speak of.’

‘Then you can send it me; I should be pleased to trust you.’

‘To tell the truth,’ answered the old gentleman, ’I am more than half inclined to stay; I am in need of funds.’

‘If a loan of ten shillings would help you, it is at your service,’ responded Watts, with eagerness.

‘No, I think I would rather stay,’ said the old man, ’and get my bill discounted.’

‘You shall not stay in my house,’ cried Mr Watts.  ’This is the last time you shall have a bed at the “Tregonwell Arms".’

‘I insist upon remaining,’ replied Mr Finsbury, with spirit; ’I remain by Act of Parliament; turn me out if you dare.’

‘Then pay your bill,’ said Mr Watts.

‘Take that,’ cried the old man, tossing him the negotiable bill.

‘It is not legal tender,’ replied Mr Watts.  ’You must leave my house at once.’

‘You cannot appreciate the contempt I feel for you, Mr Watts,’ said the old gentleman, resigning himself to circumstances.  ’But you shall feel it in one way:  I refuse to pay my bill.’

‘I don’t care for your bill,’ responded Mr Watts.  ’What I want is your absence.’

‘That you shall have!’ said the old gentleman, and, taking up his forage cap as he spoke, he crammed it on his head.  ’Perhaps you are too insolent,’ he added, ’to inform me of the time of the next London train?’

‘It leaves in three-quarters of an hour,’ returned the innkeeper with alacrity.  ‘You can easily catch it.’

Joseph’s position was one of considerable weakness.  On the one hand, it would have been well to avoid the direct line of railway, since it was there he might expect his nephews to lie in wait for his recapture; on the other, it was highly desirable, it was even strictly needful, to get the bill discounted ere it should be stopped.  To London, therefore, he decided to proceed on the first train; and there remained but one point to be considered, how to pay his fare.

Joseph’s nails were never clean; he ate almost entirely with his knife.  I doubt if you could say he had the manners of a gentleman; but he had better than that, a touch of genuine dignity.  Was it from his stay in Asia Minor?  Was it from a strain in the Finsbury blood sometimes alluded to by customers?  At least, when he presented himself before the station-master, his salaam was truly Oriental, palm-trees appeared to crowd about the little office, and the simoom or the bulbul—­but I leave this image to persons better acquainted with the East.  His appearance, besides, was highly in his favour; the uniform of Sir Faraday, however inconvenient and conspicuous, was, at least, a costume in which no swindler could have hoped to prosper; and the exhibition of a valuable watch and a bill for eight hundred pounds completed what deportment had begun.  A quarter of an hour later, when the train came up, Mr Finsbury was introduced to the guard and installed in a first-class compartment, the station-master smilingly assuming all responsibility.