The author should have been grateful for the stranger’s offer to bail him out of potential insolvency. He could have embraced him and even accepted fifty farthings for restoring him from a mental agony. But he asked the mediator if that was the most he could offer. This was . nothing but wordly guile. The man offered to find out saying there was no harm trying for a bit more. The author gave his ultimatum that he would take a hundred. He got a cheque for hundred guineas.