Mr. Suggs answered, with the grace natural to his order, 'I s'pose you can
do as you like. I don't pay you nothing.'

The other bowed and withdrew.

Two days later he again penned a letter to Mrs. Weare. It ran thus:--

'The money which you so kindly sent, and which I have already
acknowledged, has now been distributed. To ensure a proper use of it,
I handed the cheque, with clear instructions, to a clergyman in this
neighbourhood, who has been so good as to jot down, on the sheet
enclosed, a memorandum of his beneficiaries, which I trust will be
satisfactory and gratifying to you.

'But why, you will ask, did I have recourse to a clergyman. Why did I
not use my own experience, and give myself the pleasure of helping
poor souls in whom I have a personal interest--I who have devoted my
life to this mission of mercy?

'The answer is brief and plain. I have lied to you.

'I am _not_ living in this place of my free will. I am _not_
devoting myself to works of charity. I am--no, no, I was--merely a
poor gentleman, who, on a certain day, found that he had wasted his
substance in a foolish speculation, and who, ashamed to take his
friends into his confidence, fled to a life of miserable obscurity.
You see that I have added disgrace to misfortune. I will not tell you
how very near I came to something still worse.

'I have been serving an apprenticeship to a certain handicraft which