"My flesh is all upon the creep at this very moment.

I don't think I ever had such a turn in my life." They went back to the parlour, leaving the two servants still sitting by the fire; Sarah Batts with that look of injured innocence fixed upon her wooden countenance, Martha Holden cheerfully employed in the construction of her Sunday cap.

In the parlour the two men were both standing by the table, the stranger with his back to the women as they entered, Stephen Whitelaw facing him.

The former seemed to have been counting something, but stopped abruptly as the women came into the room.
There was a little heap of bank-notes lying on the table.

Stephen snatched them up hastily, and thrust them in a bundle into his waistcoat-pocket; while the stranger put a strap round a bulky red morocco pocket-book with a more deliberate air, as of one who had nothing to hide from the world.
That guilty furtive air of Stephen's, and, above all, that passage of money between the two men, confirmed Mrs.Tadman in her notion that Wyncomb Farm was going to change hands.