“And you’ve come down to try and bully me,” said Hallam fiercely.
His visitor sat back, looking at him hard, without speaking for a few minutes, and then he said quietly:
“I give it up.”
“Give what up—the attempt?”
“I couldn’t give that up, because I was not going to attempt anything,” said Crellock, smiling; “I mean give it up about you. What is it in you, Rob Hallam, that made so many fellows like you, and give way to you in everything? I don’t know. But there, never mind that. Won’t you shake hands?”
“Tell me first why you have come down here. Do you want money?”
“No.”
“Then why did you come down?”
Crellock’s face softened a little, and it was not an ill-looking countenance as he sat there, softly tapping the arm of the chair. At last he spoke.
“I never had many friends,” he said huskily. “Father and mother went when I was a little one, and Uncle Richard gave me my education, telling me brutally that I was an encumbrance. I always had to stop at school through the holidays, and when I was old enough he put me, as you know, in the bank, and told me he had done his duty by me, and I must now look to myself.”