The men, wearied, befouled and thirsty, sat silent in the cart, each dreaming of the two gallons of beer that awaited him at the end of the journey. They knew they had been searching for papers; but to them valuable papers had only one signification; something perhaps to do with a bank; something which constituted a claim to money: they had discussed it during the half-hour midday interval for food. Wills, mortgages, title-deeds, they had heard of. The daughter of one of them, a parlourmaid in the house of a leading solicitor in the neighbouring cathedral city, ranking next to legendary London in majesty in the eyes of the untravelled Water-Enders, had told him that she had heard her master say, at dinner, that the contents of the tin-boxes ranged around his office represented half a million of money. His announcement vastly impressed his colleagues, one of whom explained that all real wealth nowadays was a matter of bits of paper. He himself had fifteen pounds in the Savings Bank, but nothing to show for it but his Post Office book. Then the nature of their employer’s frenzied quest became obvious to them all. They had found nothing. Their employer sat like a ruined man. They pitied him and, in the delicacy of their English souls, refrained from intruding by speech upon his despair. In the meantime, there was no harm in surrendering their imaginations to the prospect of the incessant flow of delectable liquid down their parched throttles. When they halted at the gate of The Cedars, Baltazar pulled out a sheaf of Treasury notes and gave each man thirty shillings. The extra ten shillings represented to their simple minds, not the promised two gallons of beer, but beer in perpetuity. This generosity on the part of one evidently ruined bewildered them. Baltazar strode down the drive leaving men impressed with the idea that he was a gentleman of the old school to whose service they were privileged to be devoted. They retired, singing his praises, being elderly men of a simple and tradition-bred generation. His golf clubs on the lawn beside him, Pillivant, attired in imaginative golfing raiment, was taking the air in front of the house. He lay in an elaborate cane chair and smoked a great cigar. At the sight of Baltazar he started up. “Holy Moses! You are in a devil of a mess.” “I’m afraid I’ve ruined your suit,” said Baltazar. “If you would only let me know what your tailor charged for it——” “The Sackville Street robber bled me eight guineas,” said Pillivant, rather greedily. “Here are eight pounds ten,” said Baltazar, counting out his notes. “Two shillings change,” laughed Pillivant, handling him a florin. “It’s kind of you to relieve me from this particular embarrassment. The rest of my obligations I don’t quite see how to meet.”