"Of course you have, William! Say you don't remember. Say you don't want to remember. But don't say you have no personal experience!"
"And you think I'm being punished for something I did in a previous life?"
He looked at me in disbelief. "What else could it be?"
"I don't know," I confessed. "I certainly haven't done anything that bad in this life."
"William, if you atone for this sin, perhaps the horde of locusts will lift from you."
It wasn't much of a chance, but I was unused to having any at all. I shook off the dizziness of it. "By the Lord Harry, Brother, I'm going to give it a try!" I cried.
"I believe you," Partridge said, surprised at himself.
He ambled over to the money box on the wall. He tapped the bottom lightly and a box with no top slid out of the slightly larger box. He reached in, fished out the bill and presented it to me.
"Perhaps this will help in your atonement," he said.
I crumpled it into my pocket fast. Not meaning to sound ungrateful, I'm pretty sure he hadn't noticed it was a twenty.