Mr. Stephen's eyes glistened; and his grandmother, clasping her old withered palms together, cast a look of rapture towards the ceiling.
"Oh, deary me! deary me!" she said.
"It's a swindle," muttered Bertie.
"Oh, it's a swindle, is it?" snarled Mr. Stephen. "I'd like to swindle you, my fighting cock."
"You couldn't do it," retorted Bertie.
The stranger laughed again. Unbuttoning his waterproof, and in doing so distributing a shower of water in his immediate neighbourhood, out of his trousers pocket he took a heavy purse, out of the purse he took a sovereign, and the sovereign he handed to Mr. Stephen Huffham. Mr. Stephen's palm closed on the glittering coin with a certain degree of hesitation.
"Now you're quits," said the stranger, "you and the boy."
"Quits!" said Bertie, "it's seventeen-and-sixpence in his pocket!"
Mr. Stephen smiled, not quite pleasantly; he might have been moved to speech had not the stranger interrupted him.
"You're pretty large, and that's all you are; if this boy were about your size, he'd lay it on to you. I should say you were a considerable fine sample of a--coward."