"Well, I got a clue accidental. Don't mind saying so. I was about some business lately for a gentleman in Birmingham, named Foster, and in a packet of letters he put into my hand to look over, I found a note from George Winter, written from your office this past summer. It was just one of them curious chances that don't happen often; for Foster had no notion that the letter was there, thought he had destroyed it. It was but a line or two, and them of no moment, but it showed me that Mr. Brown and George Winter was the same man, and I soon wormed out his identity with Godfrey Pitman." "Johnson and Co. will be for prosecuting him, I suppose?" observed Bede, still as if he were dreaming. "No," said Mr. Butterby. "I've seen Johnson and Co.: leastways Johnson. In regard to that past transaction of theirs, his opinion has changed, and he thinks that Winter, though culpably careless, and unpardonably blind as to the faith he reposed in Samuel Teague, had not himself any guilty knowledge. Anyway, Winter has been doing what he can since to repair mischief: been living on a crust and working night and day, to transmit sums periodically to Johnson in an anonymous manner--except that he just let it be known they came from him, by giving no clue to where he was, or how he gained them--with a view to wipe off the money Sam Teague robbed them of. Teague has been doing the same from his side the Atlantic," added Mr. Butterby with a knowing laugh; "so that Johnson, as he says, is paid twice over. "Then they don't prosecute?" "Not a bit of it. And I'm free to confess that, taking in all aspects of affairs--Brown's good conduct since, and the probability that Sam Teague was the sole offender--the man has shown himself in all ordinary pecuniary interests, just as honest and trustworthy as here and there one." "Did he----" Bede Greatorex hesitated, stopped, and then went on with his sentence--"take my cheque?" "That must be left to your judgment, sir. I've no cause myself to make sure of it. The letter to Foster was written about the time the cheque was lost, or a few days later; it made an allusion to money, Brown saying he was glad to be out of his debt, but whether the debt was pounds or shillings, I've no present means of knowing. Foster wouldn't answer me a syllable; was uncommonly savage at his own carelessness in letting the letter get amid the other. Living close and working hard, Brown would have money in hand of his own without touching yours, Mr. Bede Greatorex." Bede nodded. "On the other hand, a man who has lain under a cloud is more to be doubted than one who has walked about in the open sunshine all his life. The presenter of that cheque at the bank had a quantity of black hair about his face, just as the false Godfrey Pitman had on his at Helstonleigh. But it would be hardly fair to suspect Brown on that score, seeing there's so many faces in London adorned with it natural." Again Bede nodded in acquiescence.