“Serve him with a writ.”

“He will be preciously put about.”

“He will.  Seem sorry; say you are a little short, but won’t trouble him for a month, if it is inconvenient; but he must make you safe by signing a judgment.”

“Ay! ay!  Sir, may I make bold to ask what is the game with this young Fielding?”

“You ought to know the game—­to get him in my power.”

“And a very good game it is, sir!  Nobody plays it better than you.  He won’t be the only one that is in your power in these parts—­he! he!” And Crawley chuckled without merriment.  “Excuse my curiosity, sir, but when about is the blow to fall?”

“What is that to you?”

“Nothing, sir, only the sooner the better.  I have a grudge against the family.”

“Have you? then don’t act upon it.  I don’t employ you to do your business, but mine.

“Certainly, Mr. Meadows.  You don’t think I’d be so ungrateful as to spoil your admirable plans by acting upon any little feeling of my own.”

“I don’t think you would be so silly.  For if you did, we should part.”

“Don’t mention such an event, sir.”

“You have been drinking, Crawley!”

“Not a drop, sir, this two days.”

“You are a liar!  The smell of it comes through your skin.  I won’t have it.  Do you hear what I say?  I won’t have it.  No man that drinks can do business—­especially mine.”

“I’ll never touch a drop again.  They called me into the public-house—­they wouldn’t take a denial.”

“Hold your prate and listen to me.  The next time you look at a public-house say to yourself, Peter Crawley, that is not a public-house to you—­it is a hospital, a workhouse, for a dunghill—­for if you go in there John Meadows, that is your friend, will be your enemy.”

“Heaven forbid, Mr. Meadows.”

“Drink this basinful of coffee.”

“Yes, sir.  Thank you, sir.  It is very bitter.”

“Is your head clear now?”

“As a bell.”

“Then go and do my work, and don’t do an atom more or an atom less than your task.”

“No, sir.  Oh, Mr. Meadows! it is a pleasure to serve you.  You are as deep as the sea, sir, and as firm as the rock.  You never drink, nor anything else, that I can find.  A man out of a thousand!  No little weakness, like the rest of us, sir.  You are a great man, sir.  You are a model of a man of bus—­”

“Good-morning,” growled Meadows roughly, and turned his back.

“Good-morning, sir,” said Peter mellifluously.  And opening the back door about ten inches, he wriggled out like a weasel going through a chink in a wall.

William Fielding fell like a child into the trap.  “Give me time, and it will be all right,” is the debtor’s delusion.  William thanked Crawley for not pressing him, and so compelling him to force a sale of all his hogs, fat or lean.  Crawley received his thanks with a leer, returned in four days, got the judgment signed, and wriggled away with it to Meadows’ back door.