“Why, you young viper, have you no conscience at all?” he cried savagely. Then seeing that Nell took no further notice of him, he turned to Kester. “I find that I have no loose silver about me,” he said. “Oblige me with the loan of a couple of half-crowns till we get to Sedgeley.” Whenever Mr. Skeggs made a new acquaintance he always requested the loan of a couple of half-crowns before parting from him. But the half-crowns were never paid back until asked for, and asked for more than once. A few premonitory flakes of snow were darkening the air as Kester St. George and Mr. Skeggs started on their way back across Burley Moor, the latter with a thick comforter round his neck and the bottle of gin stowed carefully away in the tail pocket of his coat. The cold seemed more intense than ever, but the wind had fallen altogether. “We are going to have a rough night,” said Skeggs as he stepped sturdily out. “We must contrive to get across the moor before the snow comes down very thick, or we shall stand a good chance of losing our way. Only the winter before last a pedlar and his wife were lost in the snow within a mile of here, and their bodies not found for a fortnight. This sudden change will play the devil with the young crops.” Kester did not answer. Far different matters occupied his thoughts. In silence they walked on for a little while. “I suppose you could give a pretty good guess,” said Skeggs at length, “at my reasons for asking you which way you were going to walk this afternoon?” “Indeed, no,” said Kester with a shrug. “I have not the remotest idea, nor do I care to know. It was you who chose to accompany me. I did not thrust my company upon you.” Skeggs laughed a little maliciously. “I don’t think there’s much good, Mr. Kester St. George, in you and I beating about the bush. I’m a plain man of business, and that reminds me,”—interrupting himself with a chuckle—“that when I once used those very words to a client of mine, he retorted by saying, ‘You are more than a plain man of business, Mr. Skeggs, you are an ugly one.’ I did my very utmost for that man, but he was hanged. Mais revenons. I am a plain man of business, and I intend to deal with this question in a business-like way. The simple point is: What is it worth your while to give me for the document I have buttoned up here?” tapping his chest with his left hand as he spoke. “I am at a loss to know to what document you refer,” said Mr. St. George, coldly. “A very few words will tell you the contents of it, though, if I am rightly informed, you can give a pretty good guess already as to what they are likely to be. In this document it is asserted that you, sir, have no right to the name by which the world has known you for so long a time—that you have no right to the position you occupy, to the property you claim as yours. That you are, in fact, none other than the son of Mother Mim herself—of the woman who lies dead in yonder hut.”