In the course of her work she chanced to look up at the Priory.  The refectory faced the lawn, and at the window of it there stood the three men looking out at her.  The Girdlestones were nodding their heads, as though they were pointing her out to the third man, who stood between them.  He was looking at her with an expression of interest.  Kate thought as she returned his gaze that she had never seen a more savage and brutal face.  He was flushed and laughing, while Ezra beside him appeared to be pale and anxious.  They all, when they saw that she noticed them, stepped precipitately back from the window.  She had only a momentary glance at them, and yet the three faces—­the strange fierce red one, and the two hard familiar pale ones which flanked it—­remained vividly impressed upon her memory.

Girdlestone had been so pleased at the early appearance of his allies, and the prospect of settling the matter once for all, that he received them with a cordiality which was foreign to his nature.

“Always punctual, my dear son, and always to be relied 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.”

“Without axin’ your leave,” growled Burt.  He was a man of such a turbulent and quarrelsome disposition that he was always ready to go out of his way to make himself disagreeable.