only in the darkness.

In 1899 Brunt's establishment occupied four shops, Nos. 52, 56, 58, and
60, in Machin Street. He had bought the freeholds at a price which timid
people regarded as exorbitant, but the solicitors of Hanbridge secretly
applauded his enterprise and shrewdness in anticipating the enormous
rise in ground-values which has now been in rapid, steady progress there
for more than a decade. He had thrown the interiors together and rebuilt
the frontages in handsome freestone. He had also purchased several
shops opposite, and rumour said that it was his intention to offer these
latter to the Town Council at a low figure if the Council would cut a
new street leading from his premises to the Market Square. Such a scheme
would have met with general approval. But there was one serious hiatus
in the plans of Ezra Brunt--to wit, No. 54, Machin Street. No. 54,
separating 52 and 56, was a chemist's shop, shabby but sedate as to
appearance, owned and occupied by George Christopher Timmis, a mild and
venerable citizen, and a local preacher in the Wesleyan Methodist
Connexion. For nearly thirty years Brunt had coveted Mr. Timmis's shop;
more than twenty years have elapsed since he first opened negotiations
for it. Mr. Timmis was by no means eager to sell--indeed, his attitude
was distinctly a repellent one--but a bargain would undoubtedly have
been concluded had not a report reached the ears of Mr. Timmis to the
effect that Ezra Brunt had remarked at the Turk's Head that 'th' old
leech was only sticking out for every brass farthing he could get.' The
report was untrue, but Mr. Timmis believed it, and from that moment Ezra
Brunt's chances of obtaining the chemist's shop vanished completely.
His lawyer expended diplomacy in vain, raising the offer week by week
till the incredible sum of three thousand pounds was reached. Then Ezra
Brunt himself saw Mr. Timmis, and without a word of prelude said: