"You mean to tell me that _you_ wrote this book?" he said. He was quite
roused.

"No; not all of it. Look; that bit is mine, and that; and the beginning
of this chapter. Nearly the whole of the third chapter is by me."

He closed the book without interest, and indeed he felt astonished at his
father's excitement. The incident seemed to him unimportant.

"And you say that eighty or ninety pages of this book are yours, and
these scoundrels have stolen your work?"

"Well, I suppose they have. I'll fetch the manuscript, if you would like
to look at it."

The manuscript was duly produced, wrapped in brown paper, with Messrs
Beit's address label on it, and the post-office dated stamps.

"And the other book has been out a month." The parson, forgetting the
sacerdotal office, and his good habit of grinning, swore at Messrs Beit
and Mr. Ritson, calling them damned thieves, and then began to read the
manuscript, and to compare it with the printed book.

"Why, it's splendid work. My poor fellow," he said after a while, "I had
no notion you could write so well. I used to think of such things in the
old days at Oxford; 'old Bill,' the tutor, used to praise my essays, but
I never wrote anything like this. And this infernal ruffian of a Ritson
has taken all your best things and mixed them up with his own rot to make
it go down. Of course you'll expose the gang?"