Then Slade went away, and we rotted Gideon rather, because not having the tooth looked rum, and made a difference in his voice. He took it very quietly, and said he rather thought his father would be able to summon Slade; and before evening school, having marked down the spot where he fancied his tooth had hit Grimbal’s house, he went to look with a box of matches. What happened afterwards he told us frankly; and it was certainly true, because, with all his faults, Gideon never lied to anybody. “I went quietly over, and began carefully looking along the bottom of the wall, using a match to every foot or so,” he said, "and I had done about half when I heard a door open. I then hooked it, and ran almost on to old Grimbal. He had not opened the door at all, but was coming up the garden path at the critical moment. Of course, he caught me. He was going to rub it into me with his stick, when I said I should think it very kind if he would hear me first, as I had a perfectly good excuse for being there. "He said: "‘What excuse can you have for trespassing in my garden, you little oily wretch?’ "‘Oily wretch’ was what he called me; and I said that my tooth had been fired into his garden that very day, about half-past one, by a chap with a catapult; and I lighted a match and showed him it was missing. "He said: "‘How the deuce are you going to find a tooth in a garden this size?’ And I told him I had marked it down very carefully, and that it had cost five guineas, and that I rather believed my father would be able to summon the chap who had shot it away. He seemed a good deal interested, and said he thought very likely he might, if it was robbery with violence. Then he asked me if I was the boy he had seen beating down the price of a purse at Wilkinson’s in Merivale, and I said I was. Then he said, ‘Come in and have a bit of cake, boy’; and I went in and had a bit of cake, and saw on a shelf in his room about fifty or sixty cricket-balls, and various things which he has collared when they went over. He asked me a lot of questions about different things, and I answered them. All he said was about money. He also asked me to be good enough to value the things he had, which came over the wall from time to time; and I did, and he thanked me. They were worth fifteen shillings and tenpence; and Wright’s ball, which everybody thought was stolen by the milkman, wasn’t, for old Grimbal’s got it; and the milkman should be told and apologized to. "Well, he knew a lot about money, and told me he had thousands of golden sovereigns, which he makes breed into thousands more. "He said: "‘You’re the only boy I ever met with a grain of sense in his head. Now, if I gave you a check on my bankers in Merivale for five pounds to-day, and wrote to you to-morrow morning to say I had changed my mind, what would you do?’