What have you been doing in London ?" "How do you know I have been in London ?" "I took that for granted when I knew you'd left your work at Dudley." "Who told you I had left it ?" "What does it matter ?" "I should like to know," said Hilliard, whose excitement had passed and left him cold.

"And I should like to know who told you before that I was in the habit of getting drunk ?" "Are you drunk now, or not ?" "Not in the way you mean.

Do you happen to know a man called Narramore ?" "Never heard the name." Hilliard felt ashamed of his ignoble suspicion.

He became silent.
"There's no reason why you shouldn't be told," added Dengate; "it was a friend of yours at Dudley that I came across when I was making inquiries about you: Mullen his name was." A clerk at the ironworks, with whom Hilliard had been on terms of slight intimacy.
"Oh, that fellow," he uttered carelessly.

"I'm glad to know it was no one else.