He had written to the brokers, requesting them to sell sufficient India Stock to bring in a sum of six thousand pounds. They had replied that they could not carry out the order unless they had the particulars of the Stock and of the amount standing in the Squire’s name at the India House. But when Arthur took the letter to the Squire’s room and read it to him, the outcome surprised him. The old man sat up in bed and confounded him by the vigor of his answer. “Want to know how much I hold?” he cried. “D—n their impudence! Then they’ll not know! Want to look at my books and see what I’m worth! What next? What is it to them what I hold? You bid ’em sell—” beating the counterpane with his stick—“you bid ’em sell two thousand two hundred pounds—at two hundred and seventy-five, that’s near the mark! That’s all they’ve got to do, the impudent puppies! Do you write, d’you hear, and tell ’em to do it!” Arthur cursed the old man’s unreasonableness, and wondered what he was to do. If there was going to be all this difficulty about the particulars, what about the certificates? How was he to get them? For the Squire as he sat erect, thrusting forward his bandaged head, and clutching the stick that lay beside him, grew almost threatening. He was in arms in defence of his moneybags and his secrets, and his nephew saw that it would take a bolder man than himself to cross him. He hesitated. “I am afraid, sir,” he ventured at last, “there’s a difficulty here that I had not foreseen. The certificates——” “They don’t want the certificates—yet! Don’t they say so? Plain as a pikestaff!” “Perhaps, sir,” doubtfully. “If Welshes have got them——” “Welshes have not got them!” Arthur did not know what to say to that. At last, in a tone as reasonable as he could compass, “I am afraid the difficulty is, sir,” he said, “that they cannot make out a transfer until they have the particulars; which I fancy we can only get from the certificates.” “Then they may go to blazes!” the Squire replied, and he lay down with his face to the wall. Not he! There might be officials at the India House who knew this or that and Welshes, who had acted for him in making one purchase or another, might know a part. But to no living man had he ever entrusted the secret of his fortune, or the result of those long years of stinting and sparing and saving that had cleared the mortgaged estate, and had been continued because habit was strong and age is penurious. No, to no man living! That was his secret while the breath was in him. Afterwards—but he was not going to give it up yet. Presently he bade Arthur go, and Arthur went, troubled in his mind, and much less assured of his position than he had been an hour before. He thanked his stars that he had not given way to the temptation to cut loose from the bank. It would never have done, he saw that now. And how was he going to extract his money, his six thousand, from this unreasonable old dotard—for so he styled him in his wrath?