"Well, Stanfield seemed to think so. He's a sort of head clerk, a fellow enormously trusted. I shouldn't wonder if he was at the bottom of it himself, they're so sure of him," said Phil, with a laugh. "He says there's a kind of suspicion of two or three. Clumsy wretches they must be if they let themselves be found out like that. But I don't believe it. I believe Brown's alone in it, and that it's him that's taken everything away. I believe it's far the safest way in those kind of dodges to be alone. You get all the swag, and you're in no danger of being rounded on, don't you know--till you find things are getting too hot, and you cut away." "I don't understand the words you use, but I think I know what you mean," said Mrs. Dennistoun. "How dreadful it is to think that in business, where honesty is the very first principle, there should be such terrible plots and plans as those!" "'Tis awful, isn't it?" said Phil, with a laugh that seemed to ring all down the combe, and came back in echoes from the opposite slope, where in the distance the cab from the station was seen hastening back towards the railway in a cloud of dust. The laugh was like a trumpet of triumph flung across the distance at the discomfited enemy thus going off drooping in the hurry of defeat. He added, "But you may imagine, even if I had known anything, he wouldn't have got much out of me. I didn't know anything, however, I'm very glad to say." "That is always the best," said Mrs. Dennistoun, with a certain grave didactic tone. "And here is Elinor, as I thought. When one cannot find her anywhere else she's sure to be found here." CHAPTER XII. "Well," said Compton, placing himself beside her, "here you are, Nell; kind of the old lady to bring me, wasn't it? I should never have found you out by myself." "Has he gone, Phil?" Elinor raised her scared face from her hands, and gave him a piteous look. "Why, Nell! you are trembling like a leaf. Was it frightened, my pretty pet, for Stanny? Stanny's gone off with his tail between his legs. Not a bit of starch left in him. As limp a lawyer as ever you saw." "Was he a lawyer?" she said, not knowing why she said it, for it mattered nothing at all to Elinor what the man was. "Not exactly; and yet, I suppose, something of the kind. He is the one that knows about law points, and such things. But now he's as quiet as a lamb, thanks to you." "Phil," she cried, "what did you make me say? I don't know what I have done. I have done something dreadful--deceived the man, as good as told him a lie." "You told him the truth," said Phil, with a laugh, "in the most judgmatical way. You stuck to it like a--woman. There's nothing like a woman for sticking to a text. You didn't say a word too much. And I say, Nell, that little defiant bit of yours--'Was there any reason why it shouldn't be the sixth?' was grand. That was quite magnificent, my pet. I never thought you had such spirit in you."