would be able to change the guinea for him, and walked in boldly.
His ears were tingling, and he felt a call to assert himself.

There was a single customer in the store--a girl. With some surprise he
recognised her for the girl who had beaten the flame out of the curtain.

She stood with her back to the doorway and a little sidewise by the
counter, from behind which the drug-seller--a burly fellow in a suit of
black--looked down on her doubtfully, rubbing his shaven chin while he
glanced from her to something he held in his open palm.

"I'm askin' you," he said, "how you came by it?"

"It was given to me," the girl answered.

"That's a likely tale! Folks don't give money like this to a girl in
your position; unless--"

Here the man paused.

"Is it a great deal of money?" she asked. There was astonishment in her
voice, and a kind of suppressed eagerness.

"Oh, come now--that's too innocent by half! A guinea-piece is a
guinea-piece, and a guinea is twenty-one shillings; and twenty-one
shillings, likely enough, is more'n you'll earn in a year outside o'
your keep. Who gave it ye?"

"A gentleman--the Collector--at the Inn just now.