WHEN Inman entered the kitchen and saw Baldwin seated in his chair upon the hearth—a whipped, miserable dog with no spirit left in him—his anger blazed forth with such sudden fierceness that the inspector, who had found him cool and level-headed as they discussed the disaster on the journey home, opened his eyes in amazement; and the detective, a shrewd, kindly-looking man with little of the official about him, observed the newcomer with keen professional interest. Sobered and at the same time stunned by the magnitude of the disaster that had overtaken him, Baldwin had remained all day in his chair upon the hearth, oblivious for the most part to what was taking place around him, and requiring to be roused like a dazed and drunken man when the police plied him with questions. Neither food nor drink had passed his lips since breakfast, though Nancy’s heart had softened at sight of his dejection and she had made him a cup of tea, and set it upon the grate at his side. It was there still, untouched, an hour later, and Nancy sat and watched him, with her baby on her knee, too humane and sympathetic to return to her room and leave Keturah to face the trouble alone, for though the older woman’s eyes were now dry they were red and swollen with the waters that had passed over them before the fountain became exhausted. At first sight of the pitiable, abject figure a black scowl leaped to Inman’s brow and he crossed over to the rug and in a voice of carefully-suppressed passion exclaimed: “So this is what comes of your whisky-drinking, you drunken brute! You’ve ruined me as well as yourself; foul-mouthed devil that you are!” Baldwin raised his eyes but there was no sense of fear or resentment to be seen in them, only hopeless misery. He was too utterly prostrated, too benumbed by this culminating stroke of fate to feel the lash of Inman’s tongue, much less to writhe under it, and all he could say was: “Every penny ta’en! Every penny!” “And whose fault is that?” Inman almost hissed. “Whose fault is it that it wasn’t banked yesterday? Didn’t I warn you? Didn’t Jones? But you were master and I was man, and there was that cursed bottle of rum to finish! It serves me right for being fool enough to lend my money to a drunken sot like you. I might as well have dropped three hundred pounds down the drain, for your miserable bits o’ scrap metal’ll never fetch two hundred!” “Who’s ta’en it, I can’t think,” the other soliloquised wearily with his eyes on Inman; “but every penny’s gone!” Inman turned away with an impatient exclamation, and seeing the detective, growled an apology for his outburst. The man with the keen, kindly eyes was looking on him with what appeared to be mild curiosity. “I should like a few words with you in the office,” he said, and the three men left the house.