“Oh, certainly. Honour bright,” said Fledgeby.

The old man, never bidden to sit down, stood with an earnest hand laid on the back of the young man’s easy chair. The young man sat looking at the fire with a face of listening curiosity, ready to check him off and catch him tripping.

“Cut away,” said Fledgeby. “Start with your motive.”

“Sir, I have no motive but to help the helpless.”

Mr. Fledgeby could only express the feelings to which this incredible statement gave rise in his breast, by a prodigiously long derisive sniff.

“How I came to know, and much to esteem and to respect, this damsel, I mentioned when you saw her in my poor garden on the housetop,” said the Jew.

“Did you?” said Fledgeby, distrustfully. “Well. Perhaps you did, though.”