At the Gullet in the Shut off the Market Place, where the tap never ceased running that evening, and half of the trade of the town pressed in to eat liver and bacon, there was no longer any talk of Boulogne. All the talk ran the other way. The drawers of the day were the butts of the evening, and were bantered and teased unmercifully. Their friends would not be in their shoes for a trifle—not they! They had cooked their goose with a vengeance—no more golden eggs for them! And very noticeable was it that whenever the banker’s name came up, voices dropped and heads came together. His luck, his power, his resources were discussed with awe and in whispers. There were not a few thoughtful faces at the board, and here and there were appetites that failed, though the suppers served in the dingy low-ceiled room at the Gullet, dark even at noon-day, were famous for their savoriness. Very different was the scene inside the bank. At the counter, indeed, discipline failed the moment the door fell to behind the last customer. The clerks sprang to their feet, cheered, danced a dance of triumph, struck a hundred attitudes of scorn and defiance. They cracked silly jokes, and flung paper darts at the public side; they repaid by every kind of monkey trick the alarms and exertions from which they had suffered during three days. They roared, “Oh, dear, what can the matter be!” in tones of derision that reached the street. They challenged the public to come on—to come on and be hanged! They ceased to make a noise only when breath failed them. But in the parlor, whither Clement, followed after a moment’s hesitation by Rodd, had hastened to join and to congratulate his father, there was nothing of this. The danger had been too pressing, the margin of safety too narrow to admit of loud rejoicing. The three met like ship-wrecked mariners drawn more closely together by the ordeal through which they had passed, like men still shaken by the buffeting of the waves. They were quiet, as men amazed to find themselves alive. The banker, in particular, sat sunk in his chair, overcome as much by the scene through which he had passed as by a relief too deep for words. For he knew that it was by no art of his own, and through no resources of his own that he survived, and his usual self-confidence, and with it his aplomb, had deserted him. In a room vibrating with emotion they gazed at one another in thankful silence, and it was only after a long interval that the older man let his thoughts appear. Then “Thank God!” he said unsteadily, “and you, Clement! God bless you! If we owe this to any one we owe it to you, my boy! If you had not been beside me, God knows what I might not have done!”