"Are you drunk now, or not?"

"Not in the way you mean. Do you happen to know a man called
Narramore?"

"Never heard the name."

Hilliard felt ashamed of his ignoble suspicion. He became silent.

"There's no reason why you shouldn't be told," added Dengate; "it
was a friend of yours at Dudley that I came across when I was making
inquiries about you: Mullen his name was."

A clerk at the ironworks, with whom Hilliard had been on terms of
slight intimacy.

"Oh, that fellow," he uttered carelessly. "I'm glad to know it was
no one else. Why did you go inquiring about me?"

"I told you. If I'd heard a better account I should have done a good
deal more for you than pay that money. I gave you a chance, too. If
you'd shown any kind of decent behaviour when I spoke to you in the
train--but it's no good talking about that now. This is the second
time you've let me see what a natural blackguard you are. It's
queer, too, you didn't get that from your father. I could have put
you in the way of something good at Liverpool. Now, I'd see you
damned first, Well, have you run through the money?"

"Every penny of it gone in drink."