Bayle involuntarily drew back his chair, and Thickens laughed--a little hard, dry laugh. "Don't be hard on the man, Mr Bayle, who advised you not to put your money and securities in at Dixons'." "Go on, sir," said the curate sternly. "Yes: I will go on!" cried Thickens, speaking now excitedly, in a low, harsh voice. "I can't carry on that nonsense. Look here, sir," he continued, shuffling his chair closer to his visitor, and getting hold of his sleeve, "you don't know our habits at the bank. Everything is locked up in our strong-room, and Hallam keeps the key of that, and carefully too! I go in and out there often, but it's always when he's in the room, and when he is not there he always locks it, so that, though I tried for years to get in there, I never had a chance." "Wretched man!" cried Bayle, trying to shake off his grip, but Thickens's fingers closed upon his arm like a claw. "Yes, I was wretched, and that's why I had the keys made, and altered again and again till I could get them to fit. Then one day I had my chance. Hallam went over to Lincoln, and I had a good examination of the different securities, shares, deeds--scrip of all kinds--that I had down on a paper, an abstract from my books." "Well, sir?" "Well, sir? Half of them are not there. They're dummies tied up and docketed." "But the real deeds?" "Pledged for advances in all sorts of quarters. Money raised upon them at a dozen banks, perhaps, in town." "But--I don't understand you, Thickens; you do not mean that you--" "That I, Mr Bayle!" cried the clerk passionately. "Shame upon you!--do you think I could be such a scoundrel--such a thief?" "But these deeds, and this scrip, what are they all?" "Valuable securities placed in Dixons' hands for safety." "And they are gone?" "To an enormous amount." "But, tell me," panted Bayle, with the horror vague no longer, but seeming to have assumed form and substance, and to be crushing him down, "who has done this thing?" "Who had the care of them, sir?" "Thickens," cried Bayle, starting from his chair, and catching at the mantelpiece, for the room seemed to swim round, and he swept an ornament from the shelf, which fell with a crash, "Thickens, for heaven's sake, don't say that." "I must say it, sir. What am I to do? I've doubted him for years." "But the money--he has lived extravagantly; but, oh! it is impossible. It can't be much." "Much, sir? It's fifty thousand pounds if it's a penny!" "But, Thickens, it means felony, criminal prosecution, a trial." He spoke hoarsely, and his hands were trembling. "It means transportation for one-and-twenty years, sir--perhaps for life." Bayle's face was ashy, and with lips apart he stood gazing at the grim, quiet clerk. "Man, man!" he cried at last; "it can't be true."