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Rh upon," he said. "You are a model to our young business men. As to you, Mr. Burt," he continued, grasping the navvy's horny hand, "I am delighted to see you at the Priory, much as I regret the sad necessity which has brought you down."

"Talk it over afterwards," said Ezra shortly. "Burt and I have had no luncheon yet."

"I am cursed near starved," the other growled, throwing himself into a chair. Ezra had been careful to keep him from drink on the way down, and he was now sober, or as nearly sober as a brain saturated with liquor could ever be.

Girdlestone called for Mrs. Jorrocks, who laid the cloth and put a piece of cold corned beef and a jug of beer upon the table. Ezra appeared to have a poor appetite, but Burt ate voraciously, and filled his glass again and again from the jug. When the meal was finished and the ale all consumed, he rose with a grunt of repletion, and, pulling a roll of black tobacco from his pocket, proceeded to cut it into slices, and to cram it into his pipe. Ezra drew a chair up to the fire, and his father did the same, after ordering the old woman out of the room and carefully closing the door behind her.

"You have spoken to our friend here about the business?" Girdlestone asked, nodding his head in the direction of Burt.

"Yes. I have made it all clear."

"Five hundred pounds down, and a free passage to Africa," said Burt.

"An energetic man like you can do a great deal in the colonies with five hundred pounds," Girdlestone remarked.

"What I do with it is nothin' to you, guv'nor," Burt remarked surlily. "I does the job, you pays the money, and there's an end as far as you are concerned."

"Quite so," the merchant said in a conciliatory voice. "You are free to do what you like with the money."