"I don't explain it," said Mr Sandbach.
"I think some explanation is due to me," said Mr Gale, with a peculiar and dangerous intonation. "If this is your notion of a practical joke."
"There was no practical joke about it at all," Mr Sandbach protested. "If the half-sovereign has disappeared it's not my fault. I made a bet with you, and I've lost it. Here's your half-crown."
He produced two-and-six, which Mr Gale accepted, though he had a strange impulse to decline it with an air of offended pride.
"I'm still seven-and-six out," said Mr Gale.
"And if you are!" snapped Mr Sandbach, "you thought you'd do me down by a trick. Offering the man ten shillings to go wasn't at all a fair way of winning the bet, and you knew it, my boy. However, I've paid up; so that's all right."
"All I say is," Mr Gale obstinately repeated, "if this is your notion of a practical joke—"
"Didn't I tell you—" Mr Sandbach became icily furious.
The friendship hitherto existing between these two excellent individuals might have been ruined and annihilated for a comparative trifle, had not a surprising and indeed almost miraculous thing happened, by some kind of freak of destiny, in the nick of time. Mr Sandbach was sticking close to Mr Gale, and Mr Gale was following in the leisurely footsteps of the very shabby man, possibly debating within himself whether he should boldly demand the return of his half-sovereign, when lo! a golden coin seemed to slip from the boot of the very shabby man. It took the stone-flags of the platform with scarcely a sound, and Mr Sandbach and Mr Gale made a simultaneous, superb and undignified rush for it. Mr Sandbach got it. The very shabby man passed on, passed eternally out of the lives of the other two. It may be said that he was of too oblivious and dreamy a nature for this world. But one must not forget that he had made a solid gain of ten shillings.
"The soles of the fellow's boots must have been all cracks, and it must have got lodged in one of them," cheerfully explained Mr Sandbach as he gazed with pleasure at the coin. "I hope you believe me now. You thought it was a plant. I hope you believe me now."