impressions were at war with each other--he was flurried by
possibilities of which he yet denied the existence. He had consented
to trust Mr. Locket with the papers a day or two longer, till he
should have thought out the terms on which he might--in the event of
certain occurrences--be induced to dispose of them. A hundred pounds
were not this gentleman's last word, nor perhaps was mere unreasoning
intractability Peter's own. He sighed as he took no note of the
pictures made by barges--sighed because it all might mean money. He
needed money bitterly; he owed it in disquieting quarters. Mr.
Locket had put it before him that he had a high responsibility--that
he might vindicate the disfigured truth, contribute a chapter to the
history of England. "You haven't a right to suppress such momentous
facts," the hungry little editor had declared, thinking how the
series (he would spread it into three numbers) would be the talk of
the town. If Peter had money he might treat himself to ardour, to
bliss. Mr. Locket had said, no doubt justly enough, that there were
ever so many questions one would have to meet should one venture to
play so daring a game. These questions, embarrassments, dangers--the
danger, for instance, of the cropping-up of some lurking litigious
relative--he would take over unreservedly and bear the brunt of
dealing with. It was to be remembered that the papers were
discredited, vitiated by their childish pedigree; such a preposterous
origin, suggesting, as he had hinted before, the feeble ingenuity of
a third-rate novelist, was a thing he should have to place himself at
the positive disadvantage of being silent about. He would rather
give no account of the matter at all than expose himself to the
ridicule that such a story would infallibly excite. Couldn't one see
them in advance, the clever, taunting things the daily and weekly
papers would say? Peter Baron had his guileless side, but he felt,
as he worried with a stick that betrayed him the granite parapets of