Checkley made reply in bold words, but still standing with hanging hands: 'I withdraw the animosity. I withdraw everything. As for young Arundel, he was a supercilious beast. We were dirt beneath his feet. The whole earth belonged to him. He used to imitate my ways of speaking, and he used to make the clerks laugh at me. I hated him then. I hate him still. It was fun to him that an old man, nigh seventy, with no education, shouldn't speak like a young gentleman of Oxford and Cambridge College. He used to stick his hat on the back of his head as if it was a crown, and he'd slam the door after him as if he was a Partner. I hated him. I was never so glad as when he ran away in a rage. He was coming between you and me, too.--Oh! I saw it. Cunning he was. Laying his lines for to come between you and me.' 'Why--you were jealous, Checkley.' 'I was glad when he ran away. And I always thought he'd done it, too. As for seeing him put the cheque back in the safe, I perceive now that I never did see him do it. Yet I seemed to think at the time that I'd remembered seeing him do a kind of a sort of a something like it. I now perceive that I was wrong. He never done it. He hadn't the wits to contrive it. That sort is never half sharp. Too fine gentleman for such a trick.--Oh! I know what you are going to say next. How about the second young fellow? I hate him too. I hate him because he's the same supercilious beast as the other, and because he's been able to get round you. He's carneyed you--no fool like an old fool--and flattered you--till you've made him a Partner. I've worked for you heart and soul for sixty years and more, and this boy comes in and cuts me out in a twelvemonth.' 'Well! but Checkley--hang it!--I couldn't make you a Partner.' 'You didn't want no Partners. You could do your work, and I could do mine and yours too, even if you did want to go asleep of an afternoon.' 'This is grave, however. You hated Mr. Austin, and therefore you bring against him this foul charge. This is very grave, Checkley.' 'No-- I thought he was guilty. I did, indeed. Everything pointed that way. And I don't understand about young Arundel, because he came into the _Salutation_ with the Cambridge gentleman who gets drunk there every night, and he said that he lived at Camberwell for eight years with bad company as I wouldn't name to you, sir. I thought he was guilty. I did, indeed.' 'And now?' 'Oh! now it is all over. Everything's upsy down. Nobody's guilty. I know now that he hasn't had anything to do with it. He's a young man of very slow intelligence and inferior parts. He couldn't have had anything to do with it. We ought to have known that.' 'Well--but who has done it, after all?'