“The deuce you can!” The Squire was surprised. “Then all I can say is, you’ve found a d—d good cleaner, lad. If you got that blood off—but as you did, all’s well. I was afeared I’d owe you a new coat, my boy. I’d not forgotten it, but I knew that you’d not be wearing it this weather, and I thought in another week or two I’d be getting this bandage off. Then I’d see how it was, and what we could do with it.” Arthur understood then, and a thrill of alarm ran through him. What if the Squire began—but no, the danger was over, and as quickly as possible he rid himself of fear. He was not a fool to start at shadows. Things were going so well with him that he had no mind to spare for trifles, and no time to look aside. CHAPTER XXI July had passed into August. Who was it who whispered the first word of doubt? Of misgiving? Where was felt the first shiver of distrust? What lips first let drop the fatal syllables, a fall? Who in the secrecy of some bank-parlor or some discounter’s office, sitting at the centre of the spider’s web of credit, felt a single filament, stretched it may be across half a world, shiver, and relax? And, refusing to draw the unwelcome inference, sceptical of danger, felt perhaps a second shock, ever so slight and ever so distant; and then, reading the message aright, began to narrow his commitments, to draw in his resources, to call in his money, to turn into gold his paper wealth? And so from that dark office or parlor in Fenchurch Street or Change Alley, set in motion, obscurely, imperceptibly at first, the mighty impetus that was to reach to such tremendous ends? Who? Probably no one knew then, and certainly no one can say now. But it is certain that in the late summer of that year, while the Squire sat blinded in his drab-hued room at Garth, and Ovington’s hummed with business, and Arthur rode gaily to and fro between the two, the thing happened. Some one, some bank, perhaps some great speculator with irons in many fires and many lands, took fright and acted on his fears—but silently, stealthily, as is the manner of such. Or it may have been a manufacturer on a great scale who looked abroad and fancied that he saw, though still a long way off, that bugbear of manufacturers, a glut.