'Well, that is kind of you,' said Undy, 'considering that you are the girl's trustee, and that I have no more to do with it than that fellow in the wig there.' 'I wish at any rate you would let me explain myself,' said Alaric, who felt that his patience was fast going, and who could hardly resist the temptation of seizing his companion by the throat, and punishing him on the spot for his iniquity. 'I don't prevent you, my dear fellow--only remember this: I will not permit you to assert, without contradicting you, that I am responsible for Clem's fortune. Now, go on, and explain away as hard as you like.' Alaric, under these circumstances, found it not very easy to put what he had to say into any words that his companion would admit. He fully intended at some future day to thrust Scott's innocence down his throat, and tell him that he was not only a thief, but a mean, lying, beggarly thief. But the present was not the time. Too much depended on his inducing Undy to act with him. 'Ten thousand pounds has at any rate been taken.' 'That I won't deny.' 'And half that sum has been lent to you.' 'I acknowledge a debt of £5,000.' 'It is imperative that £10,000 should at once be repaid.' 'I have no objection in life.' 'I can sell my shares in the Limehouse bridge,' continued Alaric, 'for £6,000, and I am prepared to do so.' 'The more fool you,' said Undy,' if you do it; especially as £6,000 won't pay £10,000, and as the same property, if overheld another month or two, in all probability will do so.' 'I am ready to sacrifice that and more than that,' said Alaric. 'If you will sell out £4,000, and let me at once have that amount, so as to make up the full sum I owe, I will make you a free present of the remainder of the debt. Come, Undy, you cannot but call that a good thing. You will have pocketed two thousand pounds, according to the present market value of the shares, and that without the slightest risk.' Undy for a while seemed staggered by the offer. Whether it was Alaric's extreme simplicity in making it, or his own good luck in receiving it, or whether by any possible chance some all but dormant remnant of feeling within his heart was touched, we will not pretend to say. But for a while he walked on silent, as though wavering in his resolution, and looking as if he wished to be somewhat more civil, somewhat less of the bully, than he had been. There was no one else to whom Alaric could dare to open his heart on this subject of his ward's fortune; there was none other but this ally of his to whom he could confide, whom he could consult. Unpromising, therefore, though Undy was as a confederate, Alaric, when he thought he saw this change in his manner, poured forth at once the full tide of his feelings.