“Must ’a’ bin the horrors—I hope ’e didn’t die.”
“You are mistaken, my brilliant youth. But I own it was something not unlike it. My friend was drugged while having a friendly game of chance with men he deemed to be respectable. One of them dosed his liquor, while another rooked him with loaded dice, and what with one thing and another he was fleeced of all his cash, and was hocussed into the bargain.”
“An’ what was you doin’ there?”
“I? I was being rooked too, but either the drug was the wrong sort to hocuss me, or I overturned my glass by accident, but I escaped with the loss of a few pounds.”
“Hocuss yer grandmother!” Jake’s ferret-like eyes looked unutterable scorn. “Your bloomin’ hocuss was brandy.”
“The mind of Youth is perverse and foolish,” said the goldsmith, as he poured out the tea. “When the voice of Experience and the voice of Wisdom say, ‘Eschew cards, abjure dice, avoid men with lumps on their necks and revolvers in their pockets,’ sapient Youth says, ‘The old man’s goin’ dotty.’ But we shall see. Youth’s innings will come, and I bet a fiver—no, no, what am I thinking of?—I stake my honour that Youth’s middle stump gets bowled first ball.”
Three years before Tresco had arrived in Timber Town, and had started business on borrowed money. Everything had favoured him but his own improvidence, and on the eve of what he believed to be a financial boom, he found himself in what he described as “a cleft stick.” The quarter’s rent was a fortnight overdue, the interest on his mortgaged stock must be paid in a few days; and in addition to this he was now saddled with a debt of honour which, if paid, would leave him in a bankrupt condition.
Rising from his half-finished meal, he put on his apron, went into the workshop, and sat down at his bench.
The money which he had held for satisfying the immediate calls of his creditors was squandered, and in the course of the morning he might expect a visit from his landlord, demanding payment.
He might put the digger from his mind—a man drugged overnight would not trouble him next day. The thought gave him relief, and he took up his tool and began to engrave a monogram on a piece of silver. The outlines of the letters were marked in pencil, and the point of his graver deftly ploughed little furrows hither and thither, till the beauty of the design displayed itself.