ask you to give me a share of the profits you have made out of the
estate of my poor sister's husband. Why, that house has been as good as
an annuity to you. For six long years it has stood empty, or next to
empty, and never been out of law all the time."

"But, you know, Miss Blake, that not a shilling of profit has accrued to
me from the house being in law," he pleaded. "I have always been too
glad to get the rent for you, to insist upon my costs, and, really--."

"Now, do not try to impose upon me," she interrupted, "because it is of
no use. Didn't you make thousands of the dead man, and now haven't you
got the house? Why, if you never had a penny of costs, instead of all
you have pocketed, that house and the name it has brought to you, and
the fame which has spread abroad in consequence, can't be reckoned as
less than hundreds a year to your firm. And yet you ask me for the
return of a trumpery four or five sovereigns--I am ashamed of you! But I
won't imitate your bad example. Let me have five more to-day, and you
can stop ten out of the Colonel's first payment."

"I am very sorry," said my employer, "but I really have not five pounds
to spare."

"Hear him," remarked Miss Blake, turning towards me. "Young man"--Miss
Blake steadily refused to recognise the possibility of any clerk being
even by accident a gentleman--"will you hand me over the newspaper?"

I had not the faintest idea what she wanted with the newspaper, and
neither had Mr. Craven, till she sat down again deliberately--the latter
part of this conversation having taken place after she rose, preparatory
to saying farewell--opened the sheet out to its full width, and