“Come, come,” said he, “this is carrying a joke too far, for I suppose it was intended for a joke--this intrusion upon my premises--and that you never had any real thought of carrying anything away. I remember your face now; you are one of the workmen at my cousin’s place, Cornthwaite’s Iron-Works.” Bram, who was not unwilling to make terms with Miss Biron’s father, stared at him sullenly. “Ah’m not one of t’ workmen now. Ah’m in t’ office,” said he. Mr. Biron raised his eyebrows; he did not seem pleased. It had in fact occurred to him that this young man was employed as a sort of spy by the Cornthwaites, with whom he himself was by no means an acceptable person. He smiled disagreeably. “One of the clerks, eh? One of the smart young men who nibble pens in the office?” “Ay, but ma smartness isn’t outside, Mr. Biron.” “I see. Great genius--disdains mere appearance and all that.” Bram said nothing. Theodore’s sneers hurt him more than any he had ever been subjected to before. He felt, in spite of his contempt for the airy-mannered scoundrel, that he himself stood at a disadvantage, with his rough speech and awkward movements, with the dapper little man in front of him. The consciousness that he himself would be reckoned of no account compared to Theodore Biron by the very men who despised the latter and respected himself was the strongest spur he had ever felt towards self-improvement. “And what brings a person of your intellectual calibre into our humble neighborhood?” pursued Theodore in the same tone. “Ah’m looking for lodgings up this way,” answered Bram shortly. The idea had come to him that evening that, since he had been told to change his lodgings, he would settle in the neighborhood of Hessel. As he had expected, Mr. Biron did not look pleased. “And you are making yourself at home in advance!” suggested he dryly. “Well, sir, you needn’t see more of me than you feel inclined to,” retorted Bram. And, with a curt salutation, he turned on his heel and went out of the house by the back way, through the kitchen and the still open outer door. He went up the hill towards the row of cottages on the summit, and made inquiries which resulted in his finding the two modest rooms he wanted in the end house of all, within a stone’s throw of a ruin so strange-looking that Bram made a tour of inspection of the ramshackle old building before returning to the town. This ruin had once been a country mansion of fair size and of some importance, but the traces of its architectural beauties were now few and far apart. Of the main building only one side wall retained enough of its old characteristics to claim attention; at the top of the massive stonework a Tudor chimney, of handsome proportions, rose in incongruous stateliness above the decaying roof which had been placed over a row of cottages, which, built up within the old wall, had grown ruinous in their turn, and were now shut up and deserted.