"I will not declare what the butcher charges!" cried Mr Greyquill, a little warmly for so sleek a man. "But take my word, the British tradesman, whether tinker, tailor, butcher, baker, and we'll throw in grocer as we do not value rhymes, charges at rates which if reduced from profit to interest and called by that aggressive term discount, would represent every shopkeeper in the nation as big a scoundrel as the most voracious of your money-lenders, sir." He bowed as though to the applause of an audience, and looked the better pleased with Mr Lawrence for having heard him. "Well, Mr Greyquill, twenty-five guineas when I'm paid off on my return home. I can say no more, and can promise no more." "You speak like a gentleman to me in this matter, which you do not often do when I refer to it, nor your father neither----" "Sir William Lawrence has nothing to do with my affairs." "Still, he might recognise my claim and your debt, and treat me perhaps with the commiseration with which he would pity himself if he lost three hundred pounds." "You have not lost it, Mr Greyquill." "No, sir, and from my conversation with you this morning I am satisfied I shall receive every penny. I wish you a truly prosperous voyage and a safe return home, and that the Frenchman won't be the means of dishing more hopes than your own." He made another of his bows, and Mr Lawrence saluting him with a slight smile and a lifted hat, passed on. Just at the bend of the road not ten paces from where they had been standing, Mr Lawrence drew forth his pocket-handkerchief to blow his nose, and with it there came out of his pocket and fell upon the road unobserved by him, a large sheet of paper folded into four. Mr Lawrence blew his nose and went round the corner, and the paper would have been out of sight had he looked behind. Old Greyquill, trudging on busy in thought with Mr Lawrence's debt, was moved by some idea of the man to look behind him. Mr Lawrence had disappeared. Quite discernible from where Greyquill stood was the sheet of paper Lawrence had let fall. Old Greyquill stopped, peered, reflected that it might be a letter that he himself had unconsciously been toying with and had dropped, or that in some other way had let fall from his pocket. He retraced the few steps that lay between and picked it up, and proceeded with it in one hand, whilst with the other he fumbled for his spectacle-case.