sheep. Once let him lose his grip on it, and there was no chance for him. He would be swept away beyond hope of return.

“What do you mean?” he said, hoarsely.

“In dze garten. I you vrom a window did zee. You und Violed. Zo!” And Adolf, in the worst taste, gave a realistic imitation of the scene, himself sustaining the rôle of James.

James said nothing. The whole world seemed to be filled with a vast baa-ing, as of countless flocks.

“Lizzun!” said Adolf. “Berhaps I Herr Blazzervig dell. Berhaps not I do. Zo!”

James roused himself. At all costs he must placate this worm. Mr. Blatherwick was an austere man. He would not overlook such a crime.

He appealed to the other’s chivalry.

“What about Violet?” he said. “Surely you don’t want to lose the poor girl her job? They’d be bound to sack her, too.”

Adolf’s eyes gleamed.

“Zo? Lizzun! When I do gom virst here, I myself do to giss Violed vunce vish. But she do push dze zide of my face, and my lof is durned to hate.”

James listened attentively to this tabloid tragedy, but made no comment.

“Anysing vrom dze fillage, sare?”

Adolf’s voice was meaning. James produced a half-crown.

“Here you are, then. Get me half a dozen stamps and keep the change.”

“Zdamps? Yes, sure At vunce.”’

“James’s last impression of the departing one was of a vast and greasy grin, stretching most of the way across his face.

Adolf, as blackmailer, in which rôle he now showed himself, differed in some respects from the conventional blackmailer of fiction. It may be that he was doubtful as to how much James would stand, or it may be that his soul as a general rule was above money. At any rate, in actual specie he took very little from his victim. He seemed to wish to be sent to the village oftener than before, but that was all. Half a crown a week would have covered James’s financial loss.

But he asserted himself in another way. In his most lighthearted moments Adolf never forgot the reason which had brought him to England. He had come to the country to learn the language, and he meant to do it. The difficulty which had always handicapped him hitherto—namely, the poverty of the vocabularies of those in the servants’ quarters—was now removed. He appointed James tutor-in-chief of the English language to himself, and saw that he entered upon his duties at once.

The first time that he accosted James in the passage outside the class-room, and desired him to explain certain difficult words in a leading article of yesterday’s paper, James was pleased. Adolf, he thought, regarded the painful episode as closed. He had accepted the half-crown as the full price of silence, and was now endeavouring to be friendly in order to make amends.


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