Stoner laughed scornfully as he picked up his tankard. "Yes, I don't think!" he sneered. "Catch either of my governors wasting five hundred pence, or five pence, in that way! Not likely!" "Well, there's Tallington's name to back it," said one of the men. "We all know Tallington. What he says, he does. The money'll be there--if it's earned." Then they all looked at each other silently, surmise and speculation in the eyes of each. "Tell you what!" suddenly observed the little tradesman, as if struck with a clever idea. "It might be young Bent! Five hundred pound is naught to him. This here young London barrister that's defending Harborough is stopping with Bent--they're old schoolmates. Happen he's persuaded Bent to do the handsome: they say that this barrister chap's right down convinced that Harborough's innocent. It must be Bent's brass!" "What's Popsie say?" asked one of the younger members of the party, winking at the barmaid, who, having supplied her customers' needs, was leaning over a copy of the handbill which somebody had laid on the bar. "Whose brass can it be, Popsie?" The barmaid stood up, seized a glass and a cloth, and began to polish the glass with vigor. "What's Popsie say?" she repeated. "Why, what she says is that you're a lot of donkeys for wasting your time in wondering whose brass it is. What does it matter whose brass it is, so long as it's safe? What you want to do is to try and earn it. You don't pick up five hundred pounds every day!" "She's right!" said some man of the group. "But--how does anybody start on to them games?" "There'll be plenty o' starters, for all that, my lads!" observed the little tradesman. "Never you fear! There'll be candidates." Stoner drank off his ale and went away. Usually, being given to gossip, he stopped chatting with anybody he chanced to meet until it was close upon his supper-time. But the last remark sent him off. For Stoner meant to be a starter, and he had no desire that anybody should get away in front of him. The lodging in which Stoner kept his bachelor state was a quiet and eminently respectable one. He had two small rooms, a parlour and a bedchamber, in the house of a widow with whom he had lodged ever since his first coming to Highmarket, nearly six years before. In the tiny parlour he kept a few books and a writing-desk, and on those evenings which he did not spend in playing cards or billiards, he did a little intellectual work in the way of improving his knowledge of French, commercial arithmetic, and business correspondence. And that night, his supper being eaten, and the door closed upon his landlady, he lighted his pipe, sat down to his desk, unlocked one of its drawers, and from an old file-box drew out some papers. One of these, a half-sheet of ruled foolscap, he laid in front of him, the rest he put back. And then, propping his chin on his folded hands, Stoner gave that half-sheet a long, speculative inspection.