"True. Did he show you the cash?"
"He brought the notes to me to get changed for him—four fifties and two hundreds. He'd been paid short, and he wanted tenners and fivers. I paid the two hundreds to my brewer, and gave Bolisco my cheque for the lot, on the London and Provincial, Battersea Branch."
"Did you keep the numbers of the notes?"
"Not me. I got the collector's receipt for the money, and that was good enough for me. I paid the four fifties into my account at the L. and P."
"You hadn't often known Bolisco as flush as that?"
"Well, perhaps not. He's often been able to flourish a tenner, or a twenty-pun' note, after a race; but he didn't use to deal in fifties and hundreds. 'Why, Jim,' says I, 'you've been getting out of your depth.' 'Why, yes, mate,' says he, 'may be I've been a bit out of my depth.'"
CHAPTER XVII.
"All of us sinful, all with need of grace,
All chary of our life,—the minute more
Or minute less of grace which saves a soul,—
Bound to make common cause with who craves time,
We yet protest against the exorbitance
Of sin in this one sinner, and demand
That his poor sole remaining piece of time
Be plucked from out his clutch: put him to death!
Punish him now! As for the weal or woe
Hereafter, God grant mercy! Man be just,
Nor let the felon boast he went scot-free!"
The sky was dull and leaden, and there was a fine rain falling—the kind of rain that means to stay—when Faunce bent his footsteps from Sloane Square to Selburne Street, Chelsea.