Our Mutual Friend

upon you for a glass or so now and then. Else why have to do with you at all? But when you copied my clothes, and when you copied my neckhankercher, and when you shook blood upon me after you had done the trick, you did wot I’ll be paid for and paid heavy for. If it come to be throw’d upon you, you was to be ready to throw it upon me, was you? Where else but in Plashwater Weir Mill Lock was there a man dressed according as described? Where else but in Plashwater Weir Mill Lock was there a man as had had words with him coming through in his boat? Look at the lock-keeper in Plashwater Weir Mill Lock, in them same answering clothes and with that same answering red neckhankercher, and see whether his clothes happens to be bloody or not. Yes, they do happen to be bloody. Ah, you sly devil!”

Bradley, very white, sat looking at him in silence.

“But two could play at your game,” said Riderhood, snapping his fingers at him half a dozen times, “and I played it long ago; long afore you tried your clumsy hand at it; in days when you hadn’t begun croaking your lecters or whatnot in your school. I know to a figure how you done it. Where you stole away, I could steal away arter you, and do it knowinger than you. I know how you come away from London in your own clothes, and where you changed your clothes, and hid your clothes. I see you with my own eyes take your own clothes from their hiding-place among them felled trees, and take a dip in the river to account for your dressing yourself, to anyone as might come by. I see you rise up Bradley Headstone, Master, where you sat down bargeman. I see you pitch your bargeman’s bundle into the river. I hooked your bargeman’s bundle out of the river. I’ve got your bargeman’s clothes, tore this way and that way with the scuffle, stained green with the grass, and spattered all over with what bust from the blows. I’ve got them, and I’ve got you. I don’t care a curse for the t’other governor, alive or dead, but I care a many curses for my own self. And as you laid your plots agin me and was a sly devil agin me, I’ll be paid for it⁠—I’ll be paid for it⁠—I’ll be paid for it⁠—till I’ve drained you dry!”

Bradley looked at the fire, with a working face, and was silent for a while. At last he said, with what seemed an inconsistent composure of voice and feature:

“You can’t get blood out of a stone, Riderhood.”

“I can get money out of a schoolmaster though.”

“You can’t get out of me what is not in me. You can’t wrest from me what I have not got. Mine is but a poor calling. You have had more than two guineas from me, already. Do you know how long it has taken me (allowing for a long and arduous training) to earn such a sum?”

“I don’t know, nor I don’t care. Yours is a ’spectable calling. To save your ’spectability, it’s worth your while to pawn every article of clothes you’ve got, sell every stick in your house, and beg and borrow every penny you can get trusted with. When you’ve done that and handed over, I’ll leave you. Not afore.”

“How do you mean, you’ll leave me?”

“I mean as I’ll keep you company, wherever you go, when you go away from here. Let the lock take care of itself. I’ll take care of you, once I’ve got you.”

Bradley again looked at the fire. Eyeing him aside, Riderhood took up his pipe, refilled it, lighted it, and sat smoking. Bradley leaned his elbows on his knees, and his head upon his hands, and looked at the fire with a most intent abstraction.

“Riderhood,” he said, raising himself in his chair, after a long silence, and drawing out his purse and putting it on the table. “Say I part with this, which is all the money I have; say I let you have my watch; say that every quarter, when I draw my salary, I pay you a certain portion of it.”

“Say nothink of the sort,” retorted Riderhood, shaking his head as he smoked. “You’ve got away once, and I won’t run the chance agin. I’ve had trouble enough to find you, and shouldn’t have found you, if I hadn’t seen you slipping along the street overnight, and watched you till you was safe housed. I’ll have one settlement with you for good and all.”

“Riderhood, I am a man who has lived a retired life. I have no resources beyond myself. I have absolutely no friends.”

“That’s a lie,” said Riderhood. “You’ve got one friend as I knows of; one as is good for a Savings-Bank book, or I’m a blue monkey!”

Bradley’s face darkened, and his hand slowly closed on the purse and drew it back, as he sat listening for what the other should go on to say.

“I went into the wrong shop, fust, last Thursday,” said Riderhood. “Found myself among the young ladies, by George! Over the young ladies, I see a Missis. That Missis is sweet enough upon you, Master, to sell herself up, slap, to get you out of trouble. Make her do it then.”

Bradley stared at him so very suddenly that Riderhood, not quite knowing how to take it, affected to be occupied with the encircling smoke from his pipe; fanning it away with his hand, and blowing it off.

“You spoke to the mistress, did you?” inquired Bradley, with that former composure of voice and feature that seemed inconsistent, and with averted eyes.

“Poof! Yes,” said Riderhood, withdrawing his attention from the smoke. “I spoke to her. I didn’t say much to her. She was put in a fluster by my dropping in among the young ladies (I never did set up for a lady’s man), and