"Of whom did you borrow?"
"That is my affair," returned Marlowe, doggedly.
"You would find it hard to answer. Let me answer for you."
The squire did not speak, but waited, not without uneasiness, for Barton to answer his own question. He didn't have long to wait.
"You started your factory on the money realized from the stolen bonds."
"You will have to prove this," said Marlowe, furiously.
"Do you wish me to do so?" asked John Barton, significantly.
"This is all a scheme to clear yourself from the charge," exclaimed the squire. "Don't think I am so dull that I don't see through it. How happens it that you have waited ten years before it occurred to you to implicate me?"
"It did not immediately occur to me; but when you started in business on a large scale, though you were no better off than myself at the time of the theft, it set me to thinking."
"I have already told you that I used borrowed money."