'Mr. Raikes? Can't say. You see, Van, it depends upon how Old Tom has
taken his bad luck. Ahem! Perhaps he'll be all the stricter; and as a
man of honour, Mr. Raikes, you see, can't very well--'

'By Jove! I wish I wasn't a man of honour!' Raikes interposed, heavily.

'You see, Van, Old Tom's circumstances'--Andrew ducked, to smother a sort
of laughter--'are now such that he'd be glad of the money to let him off,
no doubt; but Mr. Raikes has spent it, I can't lend it, and you haven't
got it, and there we all are. At the end of the year he's free, and he--
ha! ha! I'm not a bit the merrier for laughing, I can tell you.'

Catching another glimpse of Evan's serious face, Andrew fell into louder
laughter; checking it with doleful solemnity.

Up hill and down hill, and past little homesteads shining with yellow
crocuses; across wide brown heaths, whose outlines raised in Evan's mind
the night of his funeral walk, and tossed up old feelings dead as the
whirling dust. At last Raikes called out:

'The towers of Fallow field; heigho!'

And Andrew said:

'Now then, Van: if Old Tom's anywhere, he's here. You get down at the
Dragon, and don't you talk to me, but let me go in. It'll be just the
hour he dines in the country. Isn't it a shame of him to make me face
every man of the creditors--eh?'