"'Certainly,' said Glenister. 'It was his fiver, and you were keeping it for him, weren't you? You won't deny that?' "'In a way I was,' I said. "'O law!' groaned Bradley. 'What a hair-splitter!' "'Very well, then,' said Glenister. 'You had Rice's five pounds and you gambled with it--in itself a jolly unprincipled thing to do, as it wasn't yours: poor devils are doing time all over the place for much less; and now, when your flutter turns up trumps, you deny him--who might have been your victim--the benefit! I call it downright mean--squalid, in fact.' "'You make it sound rotten,' I said, 'but there's a fallacy somewhere. To begin with, as I said before, it isn't the butler's own money till to-morrow. He hadn't earned it till the end of our visit. If it wasn't his it is ours, and we could do as we liked with it. We did, and the result is we have now enough to divide up into sixteen pounds, thirteen shillings, and fourpence each, which I shall be pleased to give you directly we get back, while Rice has his fiver intact.' "'Not for me,' said Glenister. 'I won five pounds with my own ten bob, and that's all I make out of Blackadder. I can't take your sixteen pounds odd, because it isn't mine. I may snore, as you agree to allege, but I'm not a thief.' "'O law!' Bradley groaned again. 'My dear Glenister, you're talking like a Herbert Spencer sort of ass. All it means is that the Goat and I will have to take twenty-five pounds each?' "'No,' said Glenister, 'you can't do that; because a third, at any rate, of the original fiver was mine, or, as I hold, the butler's, and he must have what that share made. You and the Goat can take the sixteen pounds odd each, but the butler must have my third and the original fiver besides. But I don't envy you your explanation to him.' "'No,' I said after a while, 'either the butler must have all or none. I can see that.' "'Dash the whole stupid business!' exclaimed Bradley. 'Let him have it all. We'll be generous.' "'It belongs to him,' said Glenister. 'There's no generosity in the matter. There's nothing but justice or injustice.' "'Very well,' Bradley snapped out. 'I'm tired of it. Next time I go to a race-meeting I'll take care it's not with a blooming Socrates.' "'Then that's settled,' I said as cheerfully as I could. 'Rice has the lot.' "'The lot,' said Glenister. 'I'll admit it's enough, but there's no other course.' "We rode the rest of the way in disgust and silence, and then"--here Sir Gaston began to laugh--"and then the rummest thing happened. Regan's groom met us at the stable-yard and took the mare's head. He seemed to be unusually excited, and I wondered if he had learned that he too had backed a winner. "'I'm afraid you'll find the house a bit upset,' he said to Glenister, 'but the fact is, there's been a little trouble while you were away. The butler's bolted. It seems he's been dishonest for a long time, and to-day he thought the game was up and ran.'