AT seven o'clock in the morning Crawley was at Meadows' house by appointment. To his great surprise the servant told him master had not slept at home. While he was talking to her Meadows galloped up to the door, jumped off, and almost pulled Crawley upstairs with him. “Lock the door, Crawley.” Crawley obeyed, but with some reluctance, for Meadows, the iron Meadows, was ghastly and shaken as he had never been shaken before. He sank into a chair. “Perdition seize the hour I first saw her!” As for Crawley, he was paralyzed by the terrible agitation of a spirit so much greater than his own.
“Crawley,” said Meadows, with a sudden unnatural calm, “when the devil buys a soul for money how much does he give? a good lump, I hear. He values our souls high—we don't, some of us.”
“Mr. Meadows, sir!”
“Now count those,” yelled Meadows, bursting out again, and he flung a roll of notes furiously on the ground at Crawley's feet, “count and tell me what my soul has gone for. Oh! oh!”
Crawley seized them and counted them as fast as his trembling fingers would let him. So now an eye all remorse, and another eye all greed, were bent upon the same thing.
“Why, they are all hundred-pound notes, bright as silver from the Bank of England. Oh, dear! how new and crimp they are—where do they come from, sir?”
“From Australia.”
“Ah! Oh, impossible! No! nothing is impossible to such a man as you. Twenty.”
“They are at Newborough—slept at 'King's Head,'” whispered Meadows.
“Good Heavens! think of that. Thirty—”