Bayle started, and flushed like some guilty creature, for he had come suddenly upon old Gemp as he supposed, though the reverse was really the case.
“Going for a walk, sir?” said Gemp, pointing at him, and scanning his face searchingly.
“Yes, Mr Gemp. Fine morning, is it not?”
Gemp stood shaving himself with one finger, as the curate passed on, and made a curious rasping noise as the rough finger passed over the stubble. Then he shook his head and began to follow slowly and at a long distance.
“I felt as if that man could read my very thoughts,” said Bayle, as he went along the street, past the bank, and out into the north road that led towards the mill.
He shuddered as he passed Dixons’, and pictured to himself what would happen if the doors were closed and an excited crowd of depositors were hungering for their money.
“It must be stopped at any cost,” he muttered; and once more the sweet sad face of Millicent seemed to be looking into his for help.
“I ought to have suspected him before,” he continued; “but how could I, when even Sir Gordon could see no wrong? Ha! Yes. Perhaps Thickens is mistaken after all. It may be, as he said, only suspicion.”
His heart seemed like lead, though, the next moment, as he neared the clerk’s house. Thickens was too just, too careful a man to have been wrong.
He stopped, and rapped with his knuckles at the door directly after, to find it opened by Thickens himself, and, as the clerk drew back, he passed in, ignorant of the fact that Gemp was shaving himself with his rough forefinger a hundred yards away, and saying to himself, “Which is it? Thickens going to marry skinny Heathery on the sly; or something wrong? I shan’t be long before I know.”