“You had better give the sovereign to me,” said Eddy, “if I am to take the trouble of it. Well, I’ll try--and you’ll have to get up that part too, Johnson, the don on the moors.” “Oh, I aint frightened for that. Do they ask you to shoot at the Cumbraes--that’s the Duke’s place?” said Johnson, with greater and greater visions of delight rising before his eyes. “They don’t ask me, but they might ask you,” cried Eddy, with a peal of laughter. “‘In for a penny, in for a pound.’ When once you get to know a Duke, all the rest follows like clockwork.” “That was what I thought,” Johnson said modestly. He marched on by Eddy’s side for some time over the heather. Then he paused, and looked his companion in the face. “Mind,” he said, “I don’t say as I shan’t like all this very much, and if I get on, I shall never forget as it was you as launched me, Master Eddy. But that’s not to interfere with business: you’ll have to keep to your day and square your account, or else the Governor will be down upon you, and there’s not a little thing in the whole affair as won’t be brought to the light of day.” “And who will that harm most?” said Eddy. “I’ll pay up, of course; but who do you think would suffer most--I, only a boy when you got me into your accursed hands, or _him_, an old bloated, money-lending, sixty per cent., blood-sucking----” “Keep a civil tongue in your head. Do you think he’ll mind what the papers may say? Look here, Eddy Saumarez, why don’t you go to your Governor and make a clean breast of it, and settle it up so as nothing should ever be brought against you again? You’ve got a lot of relations that wouldn’t like to be dragged through the mud.” “Do you think they mind what the papers may say?” said Eddy, sardonically; “when that’s the case on both sides, there can’t be much to be done either way.” “Well, smart people don’t, somehow,” said Johnson, “no more than we do--they’re so used to it. It aint my business to dictate how you’re to do it, but somehow you’ll have to do it. You may get the money how you please, but you must get it, and not a moment later than the 31st. Now that’s settled, I can give my thoughts to getting up the part.”