‘Yes.  I bought a hat.’

‘And you paid for it with the note I have lost.  I happen to know it.’

There was silence.

’Well, you understand that under ordinary circumstances you would be at once given in charge.’  Dagworthy spoke almost cheerfully.  ’If I don’t do that it’s out of consideration for your age and your family.  But as you are not to be trusted, of course I can’t continue to employ you.’

A wild hope sprang in Hood’s eyes, and the rush of gratitude at his heart compelled him to speak.

’Oh, Mr. Dagworthy, you arc generous!  You have always treated me with kindness; and this is how I repay you.  It was base; I deserve no mercy.  The temptation—­’ he grew incoherent; ’I have been driven hard by want of money.  I know that is no excuse.  I had no intention at first of taking the money; I came here to give it you; I should have done so without a thought of dishonesty, but you happened to be away.  In going to Hebsworth I lost my hat, and I had not enough money of my own to buy another; I had to change the note—­that was the temptation—­I will return it.—­But for this work here, I might by now have been in the workhouse.  Try, sir, to forgive my baseness; I cannot forgive myself.’

Dagworthy turned his face away.

‘Well,’ he said, with a wave of the hand, ‘all that’s too late.’

‘Sir,’ Hood pursued, spurred by foresight of penury perhaps as much as by dread of having to explain his dismissal at home, for penury had been his relentless foe through life Sir, is it in vain to ask you to give me another chance?  I am not a dishonest man; never before has such a temptation come to me, and surely never would again.  Will you—­I entreat you to think what it means—­at my age—­my wife—­I ought to be content with thanking you for having spared me—­how few would have done that!  Let me continue to serve you—­a lower salary—­if it be ever so little—­till I have regained your confidence—­’

Dagworthy was drumming with his fingers on the desk.  Not for an instant did he falter in his purpose, but it gave him pleasure to be thus prayed to.  The employer of labour is not as a rule troubled with a lively imagination; a pity, for it would surely gratify him to feel in its fulness at times his power of life and death.  Native defect and force of habit render it a matter of course that a small population should eat or starve at his pleasure; possibly his resolution in seasons of strike is now and then attributable to awakening of insight and pleasure in prolonging his role of hunger-god.  Dagworthy appreciated his victim’s despair all the more that it made present to him the wretchedness that would fall on Emily.  Think not that the man was unashamed.  With difficulty he could bring himself to meet Hood’s look.  But self-contempt may well consist with perseverance in gratification of ignoble instincts.

When Hood ceased, there came this reply.