"The minister says he knows nothing about it. You put him up to the scheme," said the lean man. Pendoggat shook his head and looked stupid. He did not seem able to understand that. "You've got the money. Every penny of it, and we've come to make you fork out," spluttered the grocer. Pendoggat could not understand that either. "I've been writing every week, and hearing nothing, except always going to begin and never beginning," went on the fat grocer. "I've been worrying till I couldn't sleep, and till there ain't hardly an ounce o' flesh on my bones. I couldn't stand it no longer, and I says to my friend here, I'm a going down to see what their little game is, and my friend said he was coming too, and it's just about time we did come from what my nephew Eli tells me. Says you found this here mine and put him up to getting money to work it. Says he's given the money to you. Says you've been like a madman, and pulled him up here one night, and pretty near punched his blooming head off." Pendoggat made up his mind that the grocer was an untruthful and a vulgar person. All that he said was: "I hope the minister hasn't been telling you that." "Are you going to deny it?" cried the lean man. "I don't understand you, gentlemen," said Pendoggat. "I'll take you down to the mine if you like. I don't know if nickel is to be found there. The minister says there's plenty, and I believed him." The grocer was whirling round and round after the manner of a dancing dervish and huzzing like a monstrous bee. He felt that he was losing his savings, and that sort of knowledge makes a man dance. "What do he know about nickel? He's a minister of the Gospel, not a dirty miner," he howled. "Are you telling us the minister hasn't given you the money?" demanded the other man, who made his living by buying cheap vegetables and turning them out as high-class jam. "Pezzack never told you that, gentlemen. He's treated me fair enough, and paid my wages regular as working manager, and I'm not going to think he's put that tale on you," Pendoggat answered. "He did," shouted the grocer, but in a less fiery manner, because he was impressed by the simple countryman. "He told us he'd given you every penny." "I'll not believe it of him, not till he stands before me, and I hear him say it." "If you ain't got the blooming oof, who has?" cried the vulgar little chairman. "Judge for yourself," Pendoggat answered. "Here am I, a poor man, scratching a bit of moor for my living, and pressed so hard that I've just had to sell my beasts, and now I'm selling most of my furniture to meet a debt. I've a letter in my pocket making me an offer, and you can see it if you like. There's the minister living comfortable, and married, gentlemen, married since this business started and since the money came." "I always wondered what he had to marry on," the grocer muttered.