then take the nugget to Melbourne and get it melted down secretly.  He would be able to make nearly twelve hundred pounds out of it, so the game would certainly be worth the candle.  Full of this brilliant idea of making a good sum at one stroke, Mr Villiers went home, had something to eat, and taking with him a good stout stick, the nob of which was loaded with lead, he started for the Black Hill with the intent of watching Marchurst’s house until his wife left there, and then following her down the hill and possessing himself of the nugget.

The afternoon wore drowsily along, and the great heat made everybody inclined to sleep.  Pierre had demanded by signs to be shown his bedroom, and having been conducted thereto by a crushed-looking waiter, who drifted aimlessly before him, threw himself on the bed and went fast asleep.

Old Simon, in the dimly-lit back parlour, was already snoring, and only Miss Twexby, amid the glitter of the glasses in the bar and the glare of the sunshine through the open door, was wide awake.  Customers came in for foaming tankards of beer, and sometimes a little girl, with a jug hidden under her apron, would appear, with a request that it might be filled for ‘mother’, who was ironing.  Indeed, the number of women who were ironing that afternoon, and wanted to quench their thirst, was something wonderful; but Miss Twexby seemed to know all about it as she put a frothy head on each jug, and received the silver in exchange.  At last, however, even Martha the wide-awake was yielding to the somniferous heat of the day when a young man entered the bar and made her sit up with great alacrity, beaming all over her hard wooden face.

This was none other than M. Vandeloup, who had come down to see Pierre.  Dressed in flannels, with a blue scarf tied carelessly round his waist, a blue necktie knotted loosely round his throat under the collar of his shirt, and wearing a straw hat on his fair head, he looked wonderfully cool and handsome, and as he leaned over the counter composedly smoking a cigarette, Miss Twexby thought that the hero of her novel must have stepped bodily out of the book.  Gaston stared complacently at her while he pulled at his fair moustache, and thought how horribly plain-looking she was, and what a contrast to his charming Bebe.

‘I’ll take something cool to drink,’ he said, with a yawn, ’and also a chair, if you have no objection,’ suiting the action to the word; ‘whew! how warm it is.’

‘What would you like to drink, sir?’ asked the fair Martha, putting on her brightest smile, which seemed rather out of place on her features; ‘brandy and soda?’

’Thank you, I’ll have a lemon squash if you will kindly make me one,’ he said, carelessly, and as Martha flew to obey his order, he added, ‘you might put a little curacoa in it.’

‘It’s very hot, ain’t it,’ observed Miss Twexby, affably, as she cut up the lemon; ‘par’s gone to sleep in the other room,’ jerking her head in the direction of the parlour, ’but Mr Villiers went out in all the heat, and it ain’t no wonder if he gets a sunstroke.’