'Wait a moment,' he said aloud, and his voice betrayed him by a break. He blushed and trembled, thinking that Mr. Hornett, his confidential clerk, would know how he was breaking down, and would speak of his want of courage and self-command hereafter. The reflection nerved him somewhat, and he sluiced his face with water, making a little unnecessary noise of splashing to tell the listener how he was engaged. He polished his face with the towel, and, consulting the mirror again, thought he looked a little better.

Then he re-entered his business room, and turning the key in the lock opened the door slightly, a mere inch or two.

'Who is it?'

'A Mr. Brown, sir,' said the smooth voice outside. The clerk insinuated a card through the space between the door and door-jamb, and Mr. Bommaney took it from his fingers without revealing himself. He had some difficulty in making out its inscription, for his eyes were newly tearful, and, whilst he peered at it, a reflex of his late emotions brought a sniffling sob again. He was freshly ashamed at this, and said hastily,

'Five minutes' time. I will ring when I am ready. Ask the gentleman to wait.'

Mr. James Hornett softly closed the door, and stood on the landing with long lean fingers scraping at his lantern jaws. He was a little man, short of stature, and sparely built. His skin was vealy in complexion, and he had wiry hair of a russet-red. Even when he was clean shaven his fingers rasped upon his hollow cheeks with a faint sound. His nose and chin were long and pointed, and his manner was meek and self-effacing even when he was alone. There was a tinge of wonder in his face, at war with an habitual smile, in which his eyes had no part.

'Something wrong?' he said, under his breath. He went creeping softly down the stairs. 'Something wrong? Mr. Bommaney in tears? Mr. Bommaney!'

Could anything have happened to Mr. Phil? That was the only thing Mr. Hornett could think of as being likely to affect his employer in that way.

Now Mr. Hornett had been in his present employ for thirty years, man and boy, and he was human. Therefore, when at the expiration of a little more than five minutes' time Mr. Bommaney's bell rang, he himself ushered the visitor upstairs, and in place of retiring to his own pew below stairs, lingered in a desert little apartment rarely used, and then stole out upon the landing and listened. He was the more prompted to this because the visitor, who had a bucolic hearty aspect, and was very talkative, had told him downstairs that Mr. Bommaney and himself were old friends and schoolfellows, and had been in each other's confidence for years.

'I am afraid, sir,' Mr. Hornett had said, when the visitor first presented himself, 'that Mr. Bommaney may not be able to see you at present. He gave orders not to be disturbed.'

'Not see me?' said the visitor with a laugh. 'I'll engage he will.' And then followed the statement about his old acquaintanceship with Mr. Hornett's employer.

If there were anything to be told at all, it seemed not unlikely that this visitor might be the recipient of the intelligence, and Mr. Hornett lingered to find if haply he might overhear. He heard nothing that enlightened him as to the reasons for his employer's disturbance, but heard most that passed between the two.

Bommaney had succeeded in composing himself and in washing away the traces of his tears. Then he had taken a stiffish dose of brandy and water, and was something like his own man again. He received his visitor cordially, and in his anxiety not to seem low-spirited was a little more boisterous than common.

'I'm busy, you see,' he said, waving a hand at the papers scattered on the desk, and keeping up the farce of prosperous merchandise to the last, 'but I can spare you a minute or two, old man. What brings you up to town?'

'I've come here to settle,' said the visitor. He was a florid man with crisp black hair with a hint of gray in it, and he was a countryman from head to heel. He seemed a little disposed to flaunt his bucolics upon the town, his hat, his necktie, his boots and gaiters, were of so countrified a fashion, and yet he looked somehow more of a gentleman than Bommaney.

'Yes,' he said, 'I've come to settle.' He rubbed his hands and laughed here, not because there was anything humorous and amusing in his thoughts, but out of sheer health and jollity of nature. Bommaney, still distrustful of his own aspect, and afraid of being observed, sat opposite to him with bent head and fidgeted with his papers, blindly pretending to arrange them.

'To settle,' he said absently. Then, rousing himself with an effort, 'I thought you hated London?'

'Ah, my boy,' said his visitor, 'when you're in the shafts with a whip behind you, you've got to go where you are driven.'

'Yes,' said Bommaney mechanically, 'that is so. That is so.'

The visitor was laughing and rubbing his hands again in perfect happiness and self-contentment, and had no eye for Bommaney's abstraction.

'Yes,' he said, 'it's Patty's doing. I've sold up every stick and stone, and I've taken a house in Gower Street. Do you know, Bommaney,' he added, with an air and voice suddenly serious and confidential, 'the country's going to the devil. Land's sinking in value every year. I've been farming at a growing loss these six years, and rents don't come in as they used to do. I got my chance and I took it. Lord Bellamy wanted to join the Mount Royal and the three estates. My little bit o' land lay between 'em, and I sold it to him. Sold it, too, begad, as well as I could have done half a dozen years ago.'

Then he laughed once more with great heartiness, and unbuttoning his overcoat, groped in an inner pocket. After a struggle, in the course of which he grew very red in the face, he drew forth a pocket-book of unusual dimensions, and slapped it on the desk so vigorously that his companion started.

'I got a tip the other day,' he went on; 'that old bank at Mount Royal, Fellowes and Fellowes, is going to crack up, my boy. There's something very queer in the commercial atmosphere just now, Bommaney. There are lots of old-fashioned solid people breaking up.'

To Bommaney's uneasy fancy there was in his visitor's voice an accent which sounded personal.

'I—I hope not,' he answered, somewhat feebly, 'so much depends——' (he tried hard to rally himself), 'so much depends upon a spirit of commercial confidence.'

'Exactly,' cried the visitor, laying hands' upon the pocket-book and opening it. 'I went to the bank and saw young Fellowes myself. "Look here, Fellowes," I told him, "I want my daughter's money." He stuck to it, sir; like a dog holding on to a bone. He growled about it, and he whined about it, said it wasn't fair to withdraw the money on short notice. Said I couldn't do better with it anywhere, and at last I told him, "Look here, Fellowes, I shall begin to think by and by there's something wrong." He went as red as a turkey-cock, begad, and drew a note on their London agent like a lord, and here I am with the money. Eight thousand pounds.'

By this time he had drawn a bundle of bank-notes from the pocket-book, and now sat flicking the edges of the notes with the tips of his great broad fingers. Bommaney heard the crisp music, and looked up with a momentary glance of hunger in his eyes.

'That's Patty's little private handful,' the visitor continued, opening the packet of notes, and smoothing it upon his knee. 'Eighty notes of a hundred. Pretty little handful, isn't it? They don't look,' he added, with his head reflectively on one side and his eyebrows raised a little, 'they don't look as they'd buy as much as they will.'

Bommaney tried to find a commonplace word by answer, and an inaudible something died drily in his throat. When his companion began to speak again, the bankrupt merchant wondered that he made no comment on his ghastly face—he knew his face was ghastly—or his shaking hands. There was an intuition in his mind so strong and clear that