"We are not ready to-day, sir," interposed Jacob. "You must please to give us a little grace these hard times, sir. The moment I be in work again, I'll think of you, before I think of ourselves." "I have given all the grace I can give," replied Mr. Abbott, a hard, surly man. "You must either pay, or turn out: I don't care which." "I'll pay you as soon as I am in work, sir; you may count upon it. As to turning out, sir, where could I turn to? You'd not let me take out my furniture, and we can't sit down in the street, as Fisher's wife is doing." Mr. Abbott turned to the door. When he came back, a man was with him. "I must trouble you to give this man house-room for a few days. As you won't go out, he must stop in, to see that your goods stop in." Cross's spirit rose within him. "It's a hard way to treat a man, sir! I have lived under you for years, and you have had your rent regular." "Regular!" exclaimed the landlord. "I have had more trouble to get it from your wife, since Bankes's came to Helstonleigh, than from anybody else in Honey Fair." Cross did not understand this. He was too much absorbed by the point in question to ask an explanation. "There's only three weeks owing to you, sir, and----" "Three weeks!" interrupted Mr. Abbott; "there are nine weeks owing to me. Nine weeks to-day." Jacob Cross stood confounded. "Who says there's nine weeks?" asked he. "I say so. Your wife can say so. Ask her." But Mrs. Cross, with a scared face and white lips, whisked through the door and hurried down Honey Fair. The explosion had come. Mr. Abbott, wasting no more words, departed, leaving the unwelcome visitor behind him. Andrew Brumm came in again from outside, where he had stood, out of delicacy, feeling thankful that _his_ rent was all right. It was pinching work; but Andrew was beginning to learn that debt pinches the mind, more than hunger pinches the body. "Comrade," whispered he, grasping Cross's hand, "it's all along of them Bankes's. The women buy their fal-lals and their finery, and the weekly payments to 'em must be kept up, whether or no, for fear Bankes's should let out on't to us, and ask us for the money. Of course the rent and other things gets behind. Half the women round us are knee-deep in Bankes's books." "Why couldn't you have told me this before?" demanded Cross, in his astonishment. "It's not my province to interfere with other men's wives," was Brumm's sensible answer. "Where's she got to?" cried Jacob, looking round for his wife. "I'll come to the bottom of this. Nine weeks' rent owing; and her salving me up that it was only three!" Jacob might well say, "Where's she got to?" Mrs. Cross had glided down Honey Fair into the first friendly door that happened to be open. That was Mrs. Carter's. "For mercy's sake, let's stop here a minute, Elizabeth Carter!" exclaimed she. "We have got the bums in!"