“You really are so cruel hard upon me! What I was going to make inquiries was no more than, might you have any apprehensions — leastways beliefs or suppositions — that the company’s property mightn’t be altogether to be considered safe, if I used the house too regular?”

“What do you want to know for?”

“Well, Miss Abbey, respectfully meaning no offence to you, it would be some satisfaction to a man’s mind, to understand why the Fellowship-Porters is not to be free to such as me, and is to be free to such as Gaffer.”

The face of the hostess darkened with some shadow of perplexity, as she replied: “Gaffer has never been where you have been.”

“Signifying in Quod, Miss? Perhaps not. But he may have merited it. He may be suspected of far worse than ever I was.”

“Who suspects him?”

“Many, perhaps. One, beyond all doubts. I do.”

“You are not much,” said Miss Abbey Potterson, knitting her brows again with disdain.

“But I was his pardner. Mind you, Miss Abbey, I was his pardner. As such I know more of the ins and outs of him than any person living does. Notice this! I am the man that was his pardner, and I am the man that suspects him.”

“Then,” suggested Miss Abbey, though with a deeper shade of perplexity than before, “you criminate yourself.”

“No I don’t, Miss Abbey. For how does it stand? It stands this way. When I was his pardner, I couldn’t never give him satisfaction. Why couldn’t I never give him satisfaction? Because my luck was bad; because I couldn’t find many enough of ’em. How was his luck? Always good. Notice this! Always good! Ah! There’s a many games, Miss Abbey, in which there’s chance, but there’s a many others in which there’s skill too, mixed along with it.”

“That Gaffer has a skill in finding what he finds, who doubts, man?” asked Miss Abbey.

“A skill in purwiding what he finds, perhaps,” said Riderhood, shaking his evil head.

Miss Abbey knitted her brow at him, as he darkly leered at her.

“If you’re out upon the river pretty nigh every tide, and if you want to find a man or woman in the river, you’ll greatly help your luck, Miss Abbey, by knocking a man or woman on the head aforehand and pitching ’em in.”

“Gracious Lud!” was the involuntary exclamation of Miss Potterson.

“Mind you!” returned the other, stretching forward over the half door to throw his words into the bar; for his voice was as if the head of his boat’s mop were down his throat; “I say so, Miss Abbey! And mind you! I’ll follow him up, Miss Abbey! And mind you! I’ll bring him to book at last, if it’s twenty year hence, I will! Who’s he, to be favoured along of his daughter? Ain’t I got a daughter of my own!”

With that flourish, and seeming to have talked himself rather more drunk and much more ferocious than he had begun by being, Mr Riderhood took up his pint pot and swaggered off to the tap-room.