He handed me the diamond. I sat down to breakfast with a hearty appetite. Pugh stood and scowled at me.
“Joseph Tress, it is my solemn conviction, and I have no hesitation in saying so in plain English, that you’re a thief.”
“My dear Pugh, it seems to me that we show every promise of becoming a couple of thieves.”
“Don’t bracket me with you!”
“Not at all, you are worse than I. It is you who decline to return the contents of the box to its proper owner. Put it to yourself, you have some common sense, my dear old friend! – do you suppose that a diamond worth more than a thousand pounds is to be honestly bought for ninepence?”
He resumed his old trick of dancing about the room.
“I was a fool ever to have let you have the box! I ought to have known better than to have trusted you; goodne
