“Why, you fool,” cried Meadows, “do you think I am going to keep the men’s money?”

“Keep it? why, of course!”

“What! am I a thief?  I, John Meadows, that never wronged a man of a penny?  I take his sweetheart, I can’t live without her; but I can live without his money.  I have crimes enough on my head, but not theft, there I say halt.”

“Then why in the name of Heaven did you take them at such a risk?” Crawley put this question roughly, for he was losing his respect for his idol.

“You are as blind as a mole, Crawley,” was the disdainful answer.  “Don’t you see that I have made George Fielding penniless, and that now old Merton won’t let him have his daughter?  Why should he?  He said, ‘If you come back with one thousand pounds.’  And don’t you see that, when the writ is served on old Merton, he will be as strong as fire for me and against him.  He can’t marry her at all now.  I shall soon or late, and the day I marry Susan that same afternoon seven thousand pounds will be put in George Fielding’s hand, he won’t know by whom, but you and I shall know.  I am a sinner, but not a villain.”

Crawley gave a dissatisfied grunt.  Meadows struck a lucifer match and lighted a candle.  He placed the candle in the grate—­it was warm weather.  “Come, now,” said he coolly, “burn them; then they will tell no tales.”

Crawley gave a shriek like a mother whose child is falling out of window, and threw himself on his knees, with the notes in his hand behind his back.  “No! no! sir!  Oh, don’t think of it.  Talk of crime, what are all the sins we have done together compared with this?  You would not burn a wheat-rick, no, not your greatest enemy’s; I know you would not, you, are too good a man.  This is as bad; the good money that the bountiful Heaven has given us for—­for the good of man.”

“Come,” said Meadows sternly, “no more of this folly,” and he laid his iron grasp on Crawley.

“Mercy! mercy! think of me—­of your faithful servant, who has risked his life and stuck at nothing for you.  How ungrateful great men are!”

“Ungrateful!  Crawley!  Can you look me in the face and say that?”

“Never till now, but now I can;” and Crawley rose to his feet and faced the great man.  The prize he was fighting for gave him supernatural courage.  “To whom do you owe them?  To me.  You could never have had them but for my drug.  And yet you would burn them before my eyes.  A fortune to poor me.”

“To you?”

“Yes!  What does it matter to you what becomes of them so that he never sees them again? but it matters all to me.  Give them to me and in twelve hours I will be in France with them.  You won’t miss me, sir.  I have done my work.  And it will be more prudent, for since I have left you I can’t help drinking, and I might talk, you know, sir, I might, and let out what we should both be sorry for.  Send me away to foreign countries where I can keep traveling, and make it always summer.  I hate the long nights when it is dark.  I see such cu-u-rious things.  Pray! pray let me go and take these with me, and never trouble you again.”