“Going to sell him up, are they?”
“Ja. They just are. They’ve got out two more writs, I tell you. Shouldn’t wonder if they put in an execution to-day.”
Gerard, to whom every word was as plainly audible as it was to the speakers themselves, felt as though petrified. This relative of his, with his plausible and grandiloquent schemes, stood revealed a bankrupt swindler of the worst type. All the glowing pictures of wealth and success which he had drawn now seemed mere pitiful traps to catch him, Gerard, in his youth and inexperience. Now the motive of Anstey’s change of manner was as clear as daylight. There was nothing further to be got out of him. And with a dire sinking of the heart Gerard thought of how he had been induced to invest his little all in this utterly rotten concern. But no—it could not be. Anstey was his relation. He could not be such a mean, pitiful rascal as that. But the next words were not such as to reassure him.
“How they’ve given him so much law as they have bangs me, I admit,” went on the first speaker. “Why, for the last year past he’s never had a cent he could call his own. This show, and every mortal thing in it, has been dipped up to the hilt.”
“Maybe this young Britisher he’s got hold of has helped bolster him up. Eh!”
“Maybe. So much the worse for the Britisher, for he’ll never see a brass farthing of his money again. But how the mischief even a raw Britisher could be soft-sawdered by Anstey is a stumper. He’s out and away the most infernal scoundrel in this colony.”
All the blood rushed to Gerard’s head. He had been duped, swindled. He had given several months of hard and honest work without receiving any pay, for his employer had always put him off on some pretext or other—that it was more convenient, or usual, to settle up half-yearly, or what not. He had been swindled out of even the few pounds which were all he had in the world; for, as the man had just said, he would never be able to get a farthing out of Anstey. Unfortunately there could be no reason to doubt the truth of what he had just heard, for other signs, now made clear, seemed to point to it. These men, moreover, were talking at ease among themselves, and freely. They evidently knew what and who they were talking about. His first impulse was to walk straight up to them and ask for a further explanation. Instead, however, he went back to the store.
Anstey was there, drinking grog with a transport-rider who had just come in. At sight of Gerard he started up angrily.
“Why, what the deuce is the meaning of this?” he said, in his most offensive and hectoring tone. “Not gone yet, and I sent you to saddle up half an hour ago.”
Gerard made no reply; but there was a look in his face which mightily disquieted his employer. But the latter, who was fuddled to a quarrelsome stage by the grog he had been drinking, roared out, with a volley of curses—