Dominic Ashworth

He had found it by accident, in the way one finds most things, which was by looking for something else. The wages book and the cash book disagreed, and when he went back through the carbons to find where, he found it was not one place but eleven, one per fortnight, and that each time the wages paid exceeded the wages owed by eleven shillings exactly, and that the difference had been written off, in Mr Pryor's hand, to sundries.

Sundries. Clem had kept books for nine years and had come to regard the word the way a doctor regards a cough. Not dangerous in itself. Worth listening to.

Dominic Ashworth

Forty-one men on the pay sheet for the saw floor. Forty on the muster. He went back through June. Forty-one and forty. Forty-one and forty. He went back to May. Forty and forty. He went to the week of the twenty-ninth of May, which was the week the saw had jumped its bed and taken a man's arm with it, and he found the man's name, Thomas Reilly, on the May sheet, and the June sheet, and every sheet since, at eleven shillings a fortnight, which was the half-rate for an invalid man on light duties.