“It isn’t a case at all,” returned Chips, looking him in the face. “I don’t believe a word of the whole thing! Even if it’s true that you went out to Yardley to meet Mulberry——” “Who say’s that?” “Oh, it’s one of the things that’s got about. But I can jolly well see that if you did go to meet him it wasn’t on your own account!” Confound old Chips! He was looking as if he could fairly see into a fellow’s skull, and very likely making a fellow look in turn as big a fool as he felt! “Of course you know more about it than I do!” sneered Jan, desperately. “But do you suppose I’d do a thing like that for anybody but myself?” “I believe you’d do a jolly sight more,” replied Chips, “for Evan Devereux!” Jan made no reply beyond an unconvincing little laugh; of plain denial he looked as incapable as he actually was, in his surprise at so shrewd a thrust. “The whole thing was for Devereux!” pursued Carpenter with explosive conviction. “What about him and Sandham out at Yardley the other Sunday, when old Mulberry beckoned to us by mistake? Obviously he mistook us for them; I thought so at the time, but you wouldn’t have it, just because it was Devereux! What about his coming to you yesterday morning, in such a stew about something? Oh, I didn’t listen, but anybody could spot that something was up. What a fool I was not to see the whole thing from the first! Why, of course you’d never have touched that money for yourself, let alone planting out the thing I know you value more than anything else you’ve got!” Still Jan said nothing, even when explicitly challenged to deny it if he could. He only stood still and looked mysterious, while he racked his brain for something to explain his look along with those other appearances which Chips had interpreted so unerringly. He felt in a great rage with Chips, and yet somehow in nothing like such a rage as he had been in before. It had taken old Chips to see that he was not such a blackguard as he had made himself out; that was something to remember in the silly fool’s favour; he was the only one, when all was said and done, to believe the best of a fellow in spite of everything, even in spite of the fellow himself. Condemned men cannot afford to send their only friends to blazes. But Chips soon went the way to get himself that happy dispatch. “Why should you do all this for Evan Devereux?” he demanded. “All what, Chips? I never said I’d done anything.” “Oh, all right, you haven’t! But what’s he ever done for you?” “Plenty.” “Name something—anything—he’s ever done except when you were in a position to do more for him!” And then Jan did tell him where to go. But Chips only laughed in his face, with the spendthrift courage of a fellow who did not as a rule show enough, though he had it all the same when his blood was up. And now he was in as great a passion as Jan, and just for a moment it was as fine a passion too.