He strolled away, thinking that all promised well.  Lotty most favorably and unsuspiciously received in her new character; no one knowing the contents of the packet; his grandfather gone silly; and for himself, he had had the opportunity of advising exactly what he wished to be done—­namely, that silence and inaction should be observed for a space, in order to give the holders of the property a chance of offering terms.  What better advice could he give?  And what line of action would be better or safer for himself?

If James had known who was in the house-passage, the other side of the door, there would, I think, have been a collision of two solid bodies.  But he did not know, and presently Lala Roy came back, and the torture began again.  James took down books and put them up again; he moved about feverishly, doing nothing, with a duster in his hand; but all the time he felt those deep accusing eyes upon him with a silence worse than a thousand questions.  He knew—­he was perfectly certain—­that he should be found out.  And all the trouble for nothing! and the Bailiff’s man in possession, and the safe robbed, and those eyes upon him, saying, as plain as eyes could speak, “Thou art the Man!”

“And Joe is the man,” said James; “not me at all.  What I did was wrong, but I was tempted.  Oh, what a precious liar and villain he is!  And what a fool I’ve been!”

The day passed more slowly than it seemed possible for any day to pass; always the man in the shop; always the deep eyes of the silent Hindoo upon him.  It was a relief when, once, Mr. Chalker looked in and surveyed the shelves with a suspicious air, and asked if the old man had by this time listened to reason.

It is the business of him who makes plunder out of other men’s distresses—­as the jackal feeds upon the offal and the putrid carcass—­to know as exactly as he can how his fellow-creatures are situated.  For this reason such a one doth diligently inquire, listen, pick up secrets, put two and two together, and pry curiously into everybody’s affairs, being never so happy as when he gets an opportunity of going to the rescue of a sinking man.  Thus among those who lived in good repute about the lower end of the King’s Road, none had a better name than Mr. Emblem, and no one was considered to have made more of his chances.  And it was with joy that Mr. Chalker received Joe one evening and heard from him the dismal story, that if he could not find fifty pounds within a few hours, he was ruined.  The fifty pounds was raised on a bill bearing Mr. Emblem’s name.  When it was presented, however, and the circumstances explained, the old gentleman, who had at first refused to own the signature, accepted it meekly, and told no one that his grandson had written it himself, without the polite formality of asking permission to sign for him.  In other words Joseph was a forger, and Mr. Chalker knew it, and this made him the more astonished when Mr. Emblem did not take up the bill, but got it renewed quarter after quarter, substituting at length a bill of sale, as if he was determined to pay as much as possible for his grandson’s sins.