And now, in these days — the days immediately following the departure of Luke Rowan from Baslehurst — the Tappitt family were constrained² to work very hard at the task of defaming the young man who had lately been living with them in their house. They were constrained to do this by the necessities of their position; and in doing so by no means showed themselves to be such monsters of iniquity³ as the readers of the story will feel themselves inclined to call them. As for Tappitt himself, he certainly believed that Rowan was so base a scoundrel that no evil words against him could be considered as malicious⁴ or even unnecessary. Is it not good to denounce a scoundrel? And if the rascality⁵ of any rascal⁶ be specially⁷ directed against oneself and one’s own wife and children, is it not a duty to denounce that rascal, so that his rascality may be known and thus made of no effect? When Tappitt declared in the reading-room at the Dragon, and afterwards in the little room inside the bar at the King’s Head, and again to a circle of respectable farmers and tradesmen in the Corn Market, that young Rowan had come down to the brewery⁹ and made his way into the brewery-house with a ready prepared plan for ruining him — him, the head of the firm — he thought that he was telling the truth. And again, when he spoke¹⁰ with horror of Rowan’s intention of setting up an opposition¹¹ brewery, his horror was conscientious¹². He believed that it would be very wicked in a man to oppose the Bungall establishment with money left by Bungall, that it would be a wickedness than which no commercial rascality could be more

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