very angry about the poison in the covert and would probably be ready to pay very handsomely for having the criminal found and punished.  The criminal of course was Goarly.  Nickem did not doubt that for a moment, and would not have doubted it whichever side he might have taken.  Nickem did not suppose that any one for a moment really doubted Goarly’s guilt.  But to his eyes such certainty amounted to nothing, if evidence of the crime were not forthcoming.  He probably felt within his own bosom that the last judgment of all would depend in some way on terrestrial evidence, and was quite sure that it was by such that a man’s conscience should be affected.  If Goarly had so done the deed as to be beyond the possibility of detection, Nickem could not have brought himself to regard Goarly as a sinner.  As it was he had considerable respect for Goarly;—­but might it not be possible to drop down upon Scrobby?  Bearside with his case against the lord would be nowhere, if Goarly could be got to own that he had been suborned by Scrobby to put down the poison.  Or, if in default of this, any close communication could be proved between Goarly and Scrobby,—­Scrobby’s injury and spirit of revenge being patent,—­then too Bearside would not have much of a case.  A jury would look at that question of damages with a very different eye if Scrobby’s spirit of revenge could be proved at the trial, and also the poisoning, and also machinations between Scrobby and Goarly.

Nickem was a little red-haired man about forty, who wrote a good flourishing hand, could endure an immense amount of work, and drink a large amount of alcohol without being drunk.  His nose and face were all over blotches, and he looked to be dissipated and disreputable.  But, as he often boasted, no one could say that “black was the white of his eye;”—­by which he meant to insinuate that he had not been detected in anything dishonest and that he was never too tipsy to do his work.  He was a married man and did not keep his wife and children in absolute comfort; but they lived, and Mr. Nickem in some fashion paid his way.

There was another clerk in the office, a very much younger man, named Sundown, and Nickem could not make his proposition to Mr. Masters till Sundown had left the office.  Nickem himself had only matured his plans at dinner time and was obliged to be reticent, till at six o’clock Sundown took himself off.  Mr. Masters was, at the moment, locking his own desk, when Nickem winked at him to stay.  Mr. Masters did stay, and Sundown did at last leave the office.

“You couldn’t let me leave home for three days?” said Nickem.  “There ain’t much a doing.”

“What do you want it for?”

“That Goarly is a great blackguard, Mr. Masters.”

“Very likely.  Do you know anything about him?”

Nickem scratched his head and rubbed his chin.  “I think I could manage to know something.”

“In what way?”

“I don’t think I’m quite prepared to say, sir.  I shouldn’t use your name of course.  But they’re down upon Lord Rufford, and if you could lend me a trifle of 30s., sir, I think I could get to the bottom of it.  His lordship would be awful obliged to any one who could hit it off”