It was rather a long letter and very neat.  It set forth in formal Dutch the old man’s ideas concerning the daffodil bulb and his offer regarding it.  It should be kept, he said, if it was paid for, not otherwise.  Something now, she was to name her terms, while it was still uncertain whether its flower would be blue or streaked or even common yellow—­more later, in accordance with the flowering and the profits likely to arise.

So Julia read and sat staring.  An offer for “The Good Comrade.”  Money from the people to whom it had always practically belonged in her estimation.  She could not take it from them, it was impossible; the thing was virtually their own!  But if she did not.  She re-read Joost’s letter with its protestations, and Mijnheer’s with its offer—­if she did not, the little brown bulb would be sent back to her.  Mijnheer, now that he knew of its coming, would insist on its return unless it were paid for; and Joost, she knew very well, would not deceive his father and keep it secretly, or defy his father and keep it openly; the money or the bulb she must have.  And the bulb she could not, would not have again; so the money, unearned, distasteful, having a not too pleasant savour, must be hers.  At last, in this way, without her contrivance, against her will, there had come a way to pay the debt of honour!

She sat down and wrote to Mijnheer and named her price.  Thirty pounds she asked for, no more in the future, no less now; that was the only price she could take for “The Good Comrade,” it was the sum Rawson-Clew had paid to his cousin two years ago.

Johnny posted the letter that afternoon while Julia began her search for her father’s hidden whisky.

All the afternoon Captain Polkington sat in the easy-chair, watching her contemptuously when she was in sight and moving uneasily when she was not.  He did not think she would find anything, at least not at once, though he was afraid she would if she kept on long enough and he left his treasure in its present hiding-place.  It would not last so much longer—­he dared not contemplate the time when it should all be gone; it was characteristic of him that he was easily able to avoid doing so.  The principal thought in his mind was a determination that it should not be found while any remained.  That could not and should not happen; the last little which he had carefully hoarded, which he had stinted and deprived himself to save—­to have that taken away, to be robbed of that—­the tears gathered in his eyes at the pathos of the thought.

But the whisky was not found that day, and the Captain, who slept but badly at this time, lay awake long in the night planning how and when he could move it to a place of safety further away from the house.  He would have gone down then and there, in spite of the fact that it was a blustering night of wind and rain and he not fitted to go out in such weather, but he was afraid of Julia.  She was certain to hear and follow; she had almost an animal’s alertness when once she was on the trail of anything.  So he lay and planned and waited, hoping that a chance would come during the next day.