There had been no mistake, as Mr. Paul had surmised. The linen-drapers, a long-established and respectable firm, as Paul knew, had paid the note into the Old Bank, with other monies, in the ordinary course of business; and the firm repeated to Mr. Corles that they had received it from their neighbour, the silversmith.
The silversmith himself was from home at this time; he was staying at Malvern for his health, going to Worcester on the market days only, Saturdays and Wednesdays, when the shop expected to be busy. He had one shopman only, a Mr. Stephenson, who took charge in his master's absence. Stephenson assured Mr. Corles that he had most positively taken the note from Squire Todhetley's son. Young Mr. Todhetley had gone into the shop, purchased some trifling article, giving the note in payment, and received the change in gold. Upon referring to his day-book, Stephenson found that the purchase was made and the note paid to him during the morning of Thursday, the seventeenth of June.
When this communication from Mr. Corles reached Islip, it very much astonished old Paul. "Absurd!" he exclaimed, flinging it upon his table when he had read it; then he took it up and read it again.
"Here, Chandler," said he, calling his new partner to him, "what do you make of this?"
Tom Chandler read it twice over in his turn. "If Joseph Todhetley did change the note," he observed, "he must have done it as a practical joke, and be keeping up the joke."
"It is hardly likely," returned Mr. Paul. "If he has, he will have a bad quarter of an hour when the Squire hears of it."
On this same morning, Thursday, we were preparing for Worcester; the Squire was going to drive us in--that is, myself and Tod. The phaeton was actually being brought round to the gate and we were getting our hats, when Tom Chandler walked in, saying he had come upon a little matter of business.
"No time to attend to it now, Tom," said the Squire, all in a bustle; "just starting for Worcester. You look hot."
"I am hot, for I came along at a trotting pace," said Tom; "the matter I have come upon makes me hot also. Mr. Todhetley, I must explain it, short as your time may be; it is very important, and--and peculiar. Mr. Paul charged me to say that he would have come himself, but he is obliged to stay at home to keep an appointment."