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I endeavoured to protect a poor man against a rich man, and that in this country is cause of offence." After leaving the attorney's office they called on Mr. Mainwaring the rector, and found that he knew, or professed to know, a great deal more about Goarly, than they had learned from Bearside. According to his story Nickem, who was clerk to Mr. Masters, had Goarly in safe keeping somewhere.

It would be utterly worthless unless corroborated, and the Scrobby party was not yet aware how clever Nickem had been. Thus all Rufford was interested in the case. Lord Rufford, Sir George Penwether, his Lordship's agent, and Mr.

"We must proceed against that man Scrobby," said Glomax with all the authority of a Master. "You'll never convict him on Goarly's evidence," said the Lord. Then Larry could give them further information. Nickem had positively traced the purchase of the red herrings. An old woman in Rufford was ready to swear that she herself had sold them to Mrs. Scrobby.

Nickem clearly fancied that he had been doing great things himself, and that he might be allowed to have a little mystery. But the attorney took great credit to himself in that he had rejected Goarly's case, and had been employed by Lord Rufford in lieu of Goarly.

And now it had gone to Bearside whom Nickem remembered as a junior to himself when they were both young hobbledehoys at Norrington, a dirty, blear-eyed, pimply-faced boy who was suspected of purloining halfpence out of coat-pockets. The thing was very trying to Nat Nickem. But suddenly, before that Wednesday was over, another idea had occurred to him, and he was almost content.

Master's office. But the Scrobby party in Rufford could not bring itself to believe that Nickem was correct. That Goarly's hand had actually placed the herrings no man either at Rufford or Dillsborough had doubted. Such was now Nickem's story. But of what avail would be the evidence of such a man as Goarly against such a man as Scrobby?

But Nickem was gone, and he was obliged to console himself by thinking that Nickem was at any rate employing his intellect on the right side. When he left his house with Larry Twentyman he had told his wife nothing about Lord Rufford. Up to this time he and his wife had not as yet reconciled their difference, and poor Mary was still living in misery.

Nickem was now at work trying to learn where Scrobby had purchased the poison, as it was feared that Goarly's evidence alone would not suffice to convict the man. But if the strychnine could be traced and the herrings, then there would be almost a certainty of punishing Scrobby. "And what about Goarly?" asked the Senator. "He would escape of course," said the rector.

He had learned that morning from Nickem that Goarly had consented to take 7s. 6d. an acre from Lord Rufford and was prepared to act "quite the honourable part" on behalf of his lordship. Nickem had seemed to think that the triumph would not end here, but had declined to make any very definite statements.

I wish Goarly had killed all the foxes in the county. Nasty vermin! What good are the likes of them?" Nickem, the senior clerk, was at first made almost as unhappy as Mrs. Masters by the weak decision to which his employer had come, and had in the first flush of his anger resolved to leave the office. He was sure that the case was one which would just have suited him.