“D——n Mr. Arthur!” said the Squire. But inwardly he was thinking, “There goes the last chance of my money! A drowning man don’t think whether the branch he can reach is clean or dirty! But there never was a chance. That young chap came to bamboozle me and gain time, and that’s their play.” Aloud, “Give me my stick,” he said. “Who told you—this rubbish?” “Why, it’s known at the Cross! The rooks be cawing it. Ovington is over to Bullon or some-such foreign place, these two days! And Dean he won’t be long after him! They’re talking of him, too. Ay, Parson should ha’ thought of the poor instead of laying up where thieves break through and steal. But we’re all things of a day!” “Take me to the house,” said the Squire. “Shadows as pass! Birds i’ the smoke!” continued the irrepressible Calamy, smacking his lips with enjoyment. “Leaves and the wind blows! Mr. Arthur—but there, your honor knows best where the shoe pinches. Squire Acherley’s gone through on his bay, and Parson Hoggins with him, and ‘Where’s that d—d young banker?’ he asks. Thinks I, if the Squire heard you, you’d get a flip o’ the tongue you wouldn’t like! But he’s a random-tandem talker as ever was! And”—halting abruptly—“by gum, I expect here’s another for Mr. Arthur! There’s some one drove up the drive now, and gone to the front door.” “Take me in! Take me in!” said the Squire peevishly, his heart very bitter within him. For this was worse than anything that he had foreseen. His twelve thousand pounds was gone, but even that loss—monstrous, incredible, heart-breaking loss as it was—was not the worst. Ruin was abroad, stalking the countryside, driving rich and poor, the widow and the orphan to one bourne, and his name—his name through his nephew—would be linked with it, and dragged through the mire by it, no man so poor that he might not have a fling at it. He had held his head high, he had refused to stoop to such things, he had condemned others of his class, Woosenham and Acherley, and their like, because they had lowered themselves to the traffic of the market-place. But now—now, wherever men met and bragged of their losses and cursed their deluders, the talk would be of his nephew! His nephew! They might even say that he had had a share in it himself, and canvass and discuss him, and hint that he was not above robbing his neighbors—but only above owning to the robbery! This was worse, far worse than the worst that he had foreseen when the lad had insisted on going his own way. Worse, far worse! Even his sense of Arthur’s dishonor, even his remembrance of the vile, wicked, reckless act which the young man had committed, faded beside the prospect before him; beside the certainty that wherever, in shop or tavern, men cursed the name of Ovington, or spoke of those who had ruined the country-side, his name would come up and his share in the matter be debated.