"Yes, sir, yes. They've got to know people from being petted so. Dip your fingers in the water and they'll come."

The visitor bent down and followed the example he had seen, with the result that fish after fish swam up, touched a white finger tip with its soft wet mouth, and then darted off.

"Strange pets, Mr Thickens, are they not?"

"Yes, sir, yes. But I like them," said Thickens with a droll sidewise look at his visitor. "You see the water's always gently warmed from the mill there, and that makes them thrive. They put one in mind of gold and silver, sir, and the bank. And they're nice companions: they don't talk."

He seemed then to have remembered something. A curious rigidity came over him, and though his visitor was disposed to linger by the pool where, in the evening light, the brightly-coloured fish glowed like dropped flakes of the sunset, Thickens drew back for him to pa.s.s, and then almost backed him into the house.

"Sit down, please, Mr Bayle," he said, rather huskily; and he placed a chair for his visitor. "You got my note, then?"

"Yes, and I came on. You want my--"

"Help and advice, sir; that's it. I'm in a cleft stick, sir--fast."

"I am sorry," said Bayle earnestly, for Thickens paused. "Is it anything serious?"

Thickens nodded, sat down astride a Windsor chair, holding tightly by the curved back, and rested his upper teeth on the top, tapping the wood gently.

Bayle waited a few moments for him to go on; but he only began rubbing at the top of the chair back, and stared at his visitor.

"You say it is serious, Mr Thickens."

"Terribly, sir."

"Is it--is it a monetary question?"

Thickens raised his head, nodded, and lowered it again till his teeth touched the chair back. "Some one in difficulties?"

Thickens nodded.

"Not you, Mr Thickens? You are too careful a man."

"No: not me, sir."

"Some friend?"

Thickens shook his head, and there was silence for a few moments, only broken by the dull sound of the clerk's teeth upon the chair.

"Do you want me to advance some money to a person in distress?"

Thickens raised his head quickly, and looked sharply in his visitor's eye; but only to lower his head again.

"No. No," he said.

"Then will you explain yourself?" said the curate gravely.

"Yes. Give me time. It's hard work. You don't know."

Bayle looked at him curiously, and waited for some minutes before Thickens spoke again.

"Yes," he said suddenly and as if his words were the result of deep thought; "yes, I'll tell you. I did think I wouldn't speak after all; but it's right, and I will. I can trust you, Mr Bayle?"

"I hope so, Mr Thickens."

"Yes, I can trust you. I used to think you were too young and boyish, but you're older much, and I didn't understand you then as I do now."

"I was very young when I first came, Mr Thickens," said Bayle smiling.

"It was almost presumption for me to undertake such a duty. Well, what is your trouble?"

"Give me time, man; give me time," said Thickens fiercely. "You don't know what it is to be in my place. I am a confidential clerk, and it is like being torn up by the roots to have to speak as I want to speak."

"If it is a matter of confidence ought you to speak to me, Mr Thickens?" said Bayle gravely. "Do I understand you to say it is a bank matter?"

"That's it, sir."

"Then why not go to Mr Dixon?"

Thickens shook his head.

"Mr Trampleasure? or Sir Gordon Bourne?"

"They'll know soon enough," said Thickens grimly. A curious feeling of horror came over Bayle, as he heard these words, the cold, damp dew gathered on his brow, his hands felt moist, and his heart began to beat heavily.

He could not have told why this was, only that a vague sense of some terrible horror oppressed him. He felt that he was about to receive some blow, and that he was weak, unnerved, and unprepared for the shock, just when he required all his faculties to be at their strongest and best.

And yet the clerk had said so little--nothing that could be considered as leading up to the horror the hearer foresaw. All the same though, Bayle's imagination seized upon the few scant words--those few dry bones of utterance, clothed them with flesh, and made of them giants of terror before whose presence he shook and felt cowed.

"Tell me," he said at last, and his voice sounded strange to him, "tell me all."

There was another pause, and then Thickens, who looked singularly troubled and grey, sat up.

"Yes," he said, "I'll tell you all. I can trust you, Mr Bayle. I don't come to you because you are a priest, but because you are a man--a gentleman who will help me, and I want to do what's right."

"I know--I believe you do, Thickens," said the curate huskily, and he looked at him almost reproachfully, as if blaming him for the pain that he was about to give.

He felt all this. He could not have explained why, but as plainly as if he had been forewarned, he knew that some terrible blow was about to fall.

Thickens sat staring straight before him now, gnawing hard at one of his nails, and looking like a man having a hard struggle with himself.

It was a very plainly-furnished but pleasant little room, whose wide, low window had a broad sill upon which some half-dozen flowers bloomed, and just then, as the two men sat facing each other, the last glow of evening lit up the curate's troubled face, and left that of Thickens more and more in the shade.

"That's better," he said with a half laugh. "I wish I had left it till it was dark. Look here, Mr Bayle, I've been in trouble these five years past."

"You?"

"Yes, sir. I say it again: I've been in trouble these six or seven years past, and it's been a trouble that began like a little cloud as you'd say--no bigger than a man's hand; and it grew slowly bigger and bigger, till it's got to be a great, thick, black darkness, covering everything before the storm bursts."