“Not as libertines love, nor as boys flirt and pass on.  Heaven have mercy on me, I love her with all my heart and soul and brain!  I love her with more force than such as you can hate!”

“The deuce you do!”

“I love the sweetheart—­of the man—­who lashed you—­like a dog.”

Crawley winced and rubbed his hands.

“And your fortune is made if you help me to win her.”

Crawley rubbed his hands.

“Old Merton has promised the woman I love to this George Fielding if he comes back with a thousand pounds.”

“Don’t you be frightened, sir; that he will never do.”

“Will he not?  Read this letter.”

“Ah! the letter that put you out so.  Let me see—­Mum! mum!  Found gold.  Pheugh!  Pheugh!  Pheeeugh!!”

“Crawley, most men reading that letter would have given in then and there, and not fought against such luck as this.  I only said to myself, ‘Then it will cost me ten thousand pounds to win the day.’  Well, between yesterday eleven forenoon and this hour I made the ten thousand pounds.”

He told him briefly how.

“Beautiful, sir!  What, did you make the ten thousand out of your own rival’s letter?”

“Yes, I taxed the enemy for the expenses of the war.”

“Oh, Mr. Meadows, what a fool, what a villain I was to think Mr. Levi was as great a man as you!  I must have been under a hallucination.”

“Crawley, the day that John and Susan Meadows walk out of church man and wife I put a thousand pounds into your hand and set you up in any business you like; in any honest business, for from that day our underhand dealings must end.  The husband of that angel must never grind the poor or wrong a living creature.  If Heaven consents to my being happy in this way, the least I can do is to walk straight and straightforward the rest of my days, and I will, s’help me God.”

“That is fair.  I knew you were a great man, but I had no idea you were such a good one.”

“Crawley,” said the other, with a sudden gloomy misgiving, “I am trying to cheat the devil.  I fear no man can do that;” and he hung his head.

“No ordinary man, sir,” replied the parasite, “but your skill has no bounds.  Your plan, sir, at once, that I may co-operate and not thwart your great skill through ignorance.”

“My plan has two hands; one must work here, the other a great many miles from here.  If I could but cut myself in two, all would be well; but I can’t; I must be one hand, you the other. I work thus:  Post-office here is under my thumb.  I stop all letters from him to her.  Presently comes a letter from Australia telling among pork, grains, etc., how George Fielding has made his fortune and married a girl out there.”

“But who is to write the letter?”

Can’t you guess?”

“Haven’t an idea.  She won’t believe it.”

“Not at first, perhaps, but when she gets no more letters from him she will.”