“I’m too busy now,” he said curtly to one who accosted him.”

“Sam!” his wife called him in a low voice.  She was standing behind the till.

“What is it?” He was ready to crush, and especially to crush indiscreet babble in the shop.  He thought she was going to vent her womanly curiosity at once.

“Mr. Huntbach is waiting for you in the parlour,” said Constance.

“Mr. Huntbach?”

“Yes, from Longshaw.”  She whispered, “It’s Mrs. Povey’s cousin.  He’s come to see about the funeral and so on, the—­the inquest, I suppose.”

Samuel paused.  “Oh, has he!” said he defiantly.  “Well, I’ll see him.  If he wants to see me, I’ll see him.”

That evening Constance learned all that was in his mind of bitterness against the memory of the dead woman whose failings had brought Daniel Povey to Stafford gaol and Dick to the Pirehill Infirmary.  Again and again, in the ensuing days, he referred to the state of foul discomfort which he had discovered in Daniel’s house.  He nursed a feud against all her relatives, and when, after the inquest, at which he gave evidence full of resentment, she was buried, he vented an angry sigh of relief, and said:  “Well, she’s out of the way!” Thenceforward he had a mission, religious in its solemn intensity, to defend and save Daniel.  He took the enterprise upon himself, spending the whole of himself upon it, to the neglect of his business and the scorn of his health.  He lived solely for Daniel’s trial, pouring out money in preparation for it.  He thought and spoke of nothing else.  The affair was his one preoccupation.  And as the weeks passed, he became more and more sure of success, more and more sure that he would return with Daniel to Bursley in triumph after the assize.  He was convinced of the impossibility that ‘anything should happen’ to Daniel; the circumstances were too clear, too overwhelmingly in Daniel’s favour.

When Brindley, the second-best baker and confectioner, made an offer for Daniel’s business as a going concern, he was indignant at first.  Then Constance, and the lawyer, and Daniel (whom he saw on every permitted occasion) between them persuaded him that if some arrangement was not made, and made quickly, the business would lose all its value, and he consented, on Daniel’s behalf, to a temporary agreement under which Brindley should reopen the shop and manage it on certain terms until Daniel regained his freedom towards the end of January.  He would not listen to Daniel’s plaintive insistence that he would never care to be seen in Bursley again.  He pooh-poohed it.  He protested furiously that the whole town was seething with sympathy for Daniel; and this was true.  He became Daniel’s defending angel, rescuing Daniel from Daniel’s own weakness and apathy.  He became, indeed, Daniel.