"Ah!--D'ye recollect, Gammon? the _thumbscrew_? eh? whose fault was it that it wasn't put on? eh? Tell me that, friend Gammon! Are you coming round to old Caleb Quirk's matter-of-fact way of doing business? Depend on't, the old boy has got a trick or two left in him yet, gray as his hair's grown." "I bow, my dear sir--I own myself worsted--and all through that absurd weakness I have, which some choose to call"---- "Oh Lord, Gammon! Bubble, bubble and botheration--ah, ha!--Come, there's nobody here but you and me--and eh? _old Bogy_ perhaps--so, why that little bit of blarney?" "Oh! my dear Mr. Quirk, spare me that cutting irony of yours. Surely when I have made the sincere and humiliating submission to which you have been listening--but, to return to business. I assure you that I think we ought to lose not a moment in getting in our balance, or at least coming to some satisfactory and definite arrangement concerning it. Only pinch him, and he'll bleed freely, depend on it." "Ah, ha! Pinch him, and he'll bleed! That's _my_ thunder, Gammon, ah, ha, ha!--By Jove! that's it to a T!--I always thought the fellow had blood enough in him if we only squeezed him a little. So let Snap be off and have a writ out against Master Aubrey." "Forgive me, my dear Mr. Quirk," interrupted Gammon, blandly--"we must go very cautiously to work, or we shall only injure ourselves, and prejudice our most important--and _permanent_ interests. We must take care not to drive him desperate, poor devil, or he may take the benefit of the act, and"---- "What a cursed scamp he would be to"---- "Certainly; but _we_ should suffer more than he"---- "Surely, Gammon, they'd _remand_ him! Eighteen months at the very least." "Not an hour--not a minute, Mr. Quirk," said Gammon, very earnestly. "The deuce they wouldn't? Well, Law's come to a pretty point! And so lenient as we've been!" "What occurs to _me_ as the best method of procedure," said Gammon, after musing for a moment--"is, for you to write a letter to him immediately--civil but peremptory--just one of those letters of yours, my dear sir, in which no living man can excel you--_suaviter in modo, fortiter in re_, Mr. Quirk." "Gammon, you're a gentleman, every inch of you--you are, upon my soul! If there _is_ one thing in which I----but _you're_ a hand at a letter of that sort, too! And _you_ have managed these people hitherto; why not go on to the end of the chapter?" "Mr. Quirk, I look upon this letter as rather an important one--it ought to come from the head of the firm, and to be decisively and skilfully expressed, so as at once to----eh? but you know exactly what ought to be done." "Well--leave it to me,--leave it to me, Gammon: I think I _do_ know how to draw up a teaser--egad! You can just cast your eye over it as soon as"----