“I can tell,” went on the old man, ignoring the jest, and rising from the bed as he spoke; “I can tell when a man’s got an honest face. I can tell when he means to play fair. And I wouldn’t trust you one inch farther, Mr. Horace Boyce, than I could throw a bull by the tail. I tell you that, sir, straight to your teeth.”
Horace, still with the box snugly under his arm, had sauntered out into the dark and silent courtroom. He turned now, half smiling, and said:
“Third and last call—do you want a drink?”
The old man’s answer was to slam the door in his face with a noise which rang in reverberating echoes through the desolate hall of justice. Horace, still smiling, went away.
The morning had lapsed into afternoon, and succeeding hours had brought the first ashen tints of dusk into the winter sky, before the young man completed his examination of the Minster papers. He had taken them to his own room in his father’s house, sending word to the office that he had a cold and would not come down that day; and it was behind a locked door that he had studied the documents which stood for millions. On a sheet of paper he made certain memoranda from time to time, and now that the search was ended, he lighted a fresh cigar, and neatly reduced these to a little tabular statement:
When Horace had finished this he felt justified in helping himself to some brandy and soda. It was the most interesting and important computation upon which he had ever engaged, and its noble proportions grew upon him momentarily as he pondered them and sipped his drink. More than two and a quarter millions lay before his eyes, within reach of his hand. Was it not almost as if they were his? And of course this did not represent everything. There was sundry village property that he knew about; there would be bank accounts, minor investments and so on, quite probably raising the total to nearly or quite two millions and a half. Oh, to think of it!