Then they fell to talking of horses in general, and of other topics. I stayed on, sitting by the window, not having received the message for Massock. Mr. Preen stayed also, making no move to go away; when it suddenly occurred to the Squire--he mentioned it later--that perhaps Preen might be waiting for the money. "Ten pounds, I think, was the price agreed upon," observed the Squire with ready carelessness. "Would you like to be paid now?" "If it does not inconvenience you." The Squire unlocked his shabby old bureau, which stood against the wall, fingered his stock of money, and brought forth a ten-pound bank-note. This he handed to Preen, together with a sheet of paper, that he might give a receipt. When the receipt was written, Mr. Preen took up the note, looked at it for a moment or two, and then passed it back again. "Would you mind writing your name on this note, Squire?" The Squire laughed gently. "Not at all," he answered; "but why should I? Do you think it is a bad one? No fear, Preen; I had it from the Old Bank at Worcester." "No, I do not fear that," said Preen, speaking quietly. "But since a disagreeable trouble which happened to me some years ago, I have always liked, when receiving a bank-note, to get, if possible, the donor's name upon it in his own handwriting." "What was the trouble?" "I was playing cards at the house of a man of fashion, who was brother to an earl, and lived in a fashionable square at the West End of London, and I had a ten-pound note paid me, for I won, by a man who, I understood, had recently retired with honours from the army, a Major D----. I will not give you his name. The next day, or next but one, I paid this note away to a tradesman, and it was found to be forged; cleverly forged," repeated Preen, with emphasis. "What did you do?" asked the Squire. "I got Major D.'s address from the house where we had played, carried the note to him, and inquired what it meant and whence he got it. Will you believe, Mr. Todhetley," added the speaker, with slight agitation, "that the man utterly repudiated the note, saying----" "But how could he repudiate it?" interrupted the Squire, interested in the tale. "He said it was not the note he had paid me; he stood it out in the most impudent manner. I told him, and it was the pure truth, that it was impossible there could be any mistake. I was a poor man, down on my luck just then, and it was the only note I had had about me for some time past. All in vain. He held to it that it was not the note, and there the matter ended. I could not prove that it was the note except by my bare word. It was my word against his, you see, and naturally I went to the wall." The Squire nodded. "Who was at the loss of the money?"