Had he not come home, he said to himself, Rosalind would have yielded.
With him still at Maxfield everything came to a dead lock.

Ratman could not be propitiated, still less satisfied.

The accounts would be restlessly scrutinised.
Rosalind, and in less degree Tom and Jill, would be mutinous.

Roger, at home or abroad, would be beyond reach.
All the grudges of the past months seemed to culminate in this crowning injury; and if to wish ill to one's fellow is to be a murderer, Captain Oliphant had already come perilously near to adding one new sin to his record.
But where, all this while, was the ingenuous Mr Ratman?
Why had he not, true to his word, come to claim his own--if not the Maxfield estate, at any rate the little balance due to him from his old Indian crony?
The captain, after a week or two of disappointed dread, was beginning to recover a little of his ease of mind, and flattering himself that, after all his creditor's bark was worse than his bite, when the blow abruptly fell.
Mr Armstrong had gone for the day to visit one of his very few old college friends on the other side of the county, and Tom, released from his lessons (the captain's animosity for the tutor, by the way, stopped short at withdrawing his son from the benefit of the gratuitous education of which for the last year that youth had been the recipient) was trundling a "boneshaker" bicycle along the Yeld lanes, when he perceived the jaunty form of Mr Ratman, bag in hand and cigar in mouth, strolling leisurely in the direction of Maxfield.
Tom, who was only a beginner in the art of cycling, was so taken aback by this apparition, that, after one or two furious lurches from one side of the road to the other, and a frantic effort to keep his balance, he came ignominiously to the ground at the very feet of the visitor.
"Hullo!" said that worthy; "as full of fun as ever, I see." "Hullo, Ratty!" said Tom, picking himself up; "got over your kicking ?" This genial reference to the circumstances under which the so-called lost heir had last quitted Maxfield grated somewhat harshly on the feelings of the gentleman to whom it was addressed.
"Look here, young fellow," said he, "you'd better keep a civil tongue in your head, or I shall have to pull your ear." "Try it," retorted Tom.
Mr Ratman seemed inclined to accept the invitation; but as he was anxious for information just now, he decided to forego the experiment.
"Is your father at home ?" he demanded.
"Rather.

You'd better go back the way you came.