* Or exchange of commodities without the aid of money: see Homer, and
Welsh Villages, _passim._
This transaction he concealed from his confederate.
When he had completed it he was not yet secure; for another day had
passed and Captain Dodd alive still. Men often recover from apoplexy,
especially when they survive the first twenty-four hours. Should he live,
he would not now come into any friendly arrangement with the man who had
so nearly caused his death. So then good-bye to the matrimonial
combination Hardie had at first relied on to patch his debt to Alfred and
his broken fortunes. Then as to keeping the money and defying Dodd, that
would be very difficult and dangerous. Mercantile bills are traceable
things, and criminal prosecutions awkward ones. He found himself in a
situation he could not see his way through by any mental effort; there
were so many objections to every course, and so many to its opposite. "He
walked among fires," as the Latins say. But the more he pondered on the
course to be taken should Dodd live, the plainer did this dilemma stare
him in the fade: either he must refund or fly the country with another
man's money, and leave behind him the name of a thief.
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