“Old Merton has promised the woman I love to this George Fielding if he comes back with a thousand pounds.”
“Don't you be frightened, sir; that he will never do.”
“Will he not? Read this letter.”
“Ah! the letter that put you out so. Let me see—Mum! mum! Found gold. Pheugh! Pheugh! Pheeeugh!!”
“Crawley, most men reading that letter would have given in then and there, and not fought against such luck as this. I only said to myself, 'Then it will cost me ten thousand pounds to win the day.' Well, between yesterday eleven forenoon and this hour I made the ten thousand pounds.”
He told him briefly how.
“Beautiful, sir! What, did you make the ten thousand out of your own rival's letter?”
“Yes, I taxed the enemy for the expenses of the war.”
“Oh, Mr. Meadows, what a fool, what a villain I was to think Mr. Levi was as great a man as you! I must have been under a hallucination.”
“Crawley, the day that John and Susan Meadows walk out of church man and wife I put a thousand pounds into your hand and set you up in any business you like; in any honest business, for from that day our underhand dealings must end. The husband of that angel must never grind the poor or wrong a living creature. If Heaven consents to my being happy in this way, the least I can do is to walk straight and straightforward the rest of my days, and I will, s'help me God.”