business-hour. Some people thought that Archibald Graysteel pushed his doctrinal views too far; but these were the careless herd, who set little store by mere formal church attendance, who did not consider Sabbath recreation sinful, and who could actually afford to be cheerful, and even hospitable, on the Lord's day. They were, however, in a decided minority in the conclaves where reputation is conferred, and, therefore, it mattered little to Archibald Graysteel what they chosed to think.

If William Handyside, the second partner in the firm, was a person of different temperament, it did not necessarily follow that he was less a man of business than his more sedate colleague. City men are fond of enterprise; not rashly urged, it is, they say, the great secret of commercial success. Now it was evident to the most superficial observer that William Handyside was bold and enterprising; but then it was equally clear that he was keen and shrewd. "You can't take him in," was a common expression; "he knows perfectly well what he's about," was the comment invariably made on William Handyside's speculation; "he'll never go too far with Archibald Graysteel at his elbow," was an assurance that passed like current coin in City circles. People liked William Handyside for his buoyancy, his briskness, his readiness, his unfailing spirits and good humour; they respected, and rather feared, Archibald Graysteel, for his austerity, his method, his taciturnity and closeness of disposition. The moral attributes of the firm were prudence and courage; "Festina lente" was its motto; and it prospered.

"It was

The foundation on which this prosperity was originally based was the only thing that the Wise Men of the East never exactly knew. Capital, of course," they said; but none of them could settle how much. Ah, if they had but known that, they might-to use a phrase more often quoted than rightly applied-have gone and done likewise!" Next to the art of making money for themselves, there is no secret would-be capitalists so earnestly desire to learn as that by which their rivals have become rich; it is also an intense satisfaction to them to be able to say they know how much such and such folks are worth. Commercially speaking, this is wise, because it regulates your own proceedings: you may be the wealthier and the safer for the knowledge. Yet it is not always wisdom that prompts the inquiry; curiosity has, very often, quite as much to do with it, and that sort of self-glorification which shines by the reflexion of other people's splendour. But whether the world that is centred between old London-wall and the Thames were careful or curious, they gleaned nothing from the revelations of " Graysteel and Handyside." There they were, turning money in Blasing-lane, turning money in Gammonbury Buildings: great houses went down with a crash, but "Graysteel and Handyside" stood firm; if there were gluts in the market, they were able to wait; if there was a scarcity of produce, they were ready with the supply, if not with the thing itself, at all events with its equivalent.

So widely did their transactions spread, that it seemed as if the warehouses in the London Docks had been solely built for their convenience, to store the multifarious objects in which it was their pleasure no less than their profit to deal. There was nothing you could name that the firm of Graysteel and Handyside had not a dock-warrant for. Everything that had a price anywhere and was destined for ultimate sale, came

within their all-embracing grasp. They had watched the moment, no doubt, when markets were dull to speculate in values that were neglected. There is always "a good time coming" for holders, provided you can wait for it; if not-if sales must even be forced-having bought with judgment, you may consent to a sacrifice which will still leave you a gainer. It must have been on this principle that "Graysteel and Handyside" acted, or they would hardly have been willing to part with so many inestimable warrants to the astute but accommodating house of Godsend, Stiff, and Soaper, who were never known to give more than money's worth for the objects of their traffic, bill-brokers, as a general rule, not being optimists. That "Graysteel and Handyside" were able to redeem the warrants thus pledged, whenever it became necessary to do so, must have arisen from the fact that the capricious wheel of commerce turned very opportunely in their favour, giving them the chance, just when they wanted it, of realising in some other of the many commodities which they made it their practice to hold. But however this might be, "Graysteel and Handyside" always floated on the crest of the wave, and if there was one firm more than another in which the house of Godsend, Stiff, and Soaper placed their bill-brokering confidence, it was theirs. It is true that circumstances now and then occurred which might, with simpler folks, have put a stop to this pleasant commercial see-saw-for in trade as in love, the course does not invariably run smooth; but Messrs. Godsend, Stiff, and Soaper, who were quite as wise as serpents, if not altogether as harmless as doves, saw their way to their profit, and was not that enough?

To me these matters are, and always have been, a mystery; but then how should I know anything of the rules by which the transactions of millionnaires are regulated? I, whom the income-tax just manages to seize and sear! Sufficient for me if the milkman, as he is called, does not clamour at my gate for the sixpennyworth of chalk and water that furnishes his weekly supply! Nevertheless, I have an opinion, which I will communicate as privately as the circulation of these pages will permit. It is that the millionnaire who winks at fraudulent practices so long as they do not injure him, is very nearly as deeply-dyed a criminal as the vendor of chalk-and-water instead of milk, and perhaps he does quite as much harm to public morality.

I have drifted somehow into a sort of explanation of the modus operandi by which the firm of Graysteel and Handyside contrived to deal so extensively and get on so swimmingly; but in case I should not have made my meaning perfectly clear, I may as well make a clean breast of it, and confess that the dock-warrants which they so freely circulated, and on which they succeeded in raising such large sums of money, were, one and all of them, fictitious. A small capital will do to begin with when you can create as much as you please by a mere stroke of the pen. "Graysteel and Handyside" commenced their original system of operations with something infinitesimally small, and yet it proved quite enough for their purpose, for at the end of six years, or thereabouts, they found themselves the proprietors of a circulating medium, of their own manufacture, which represented a value of half a million of money. What their assets were, in the event of being obliged to have recourse to cash payments, it is scarcely worth while to inquire. They never took

the trouble to do so, but "pushed on," as William Handyside said, trusting to the chapter of accidents.

What would a great many of the Wise Men of the East have given for a knowledge of this system, provided it could always have been kept a secret? The answer might possibly have a tendency to shake the confidence in City men of opulent writers like myself, so I refrain from giving one. It is more to the purpose of this story to show how long the secret was kept in the case of "Graysteel and Handyside." I am inclined to think it might have endured for ever-with the concurrence of Messrs. Godsend, Stiff, and Soaper-if they had not, I must say imprudently, resolved to embark in something real. Perhaps they were, in a manner, forced into this line of business by the necessity of having something substantial to show in case of the worst; perhaps it was only an extension of the speculating mania, the furor ludendi which, when once you are bitten by it, you can never refrain from; but, whatever the cause, "Graysteel and Handyside" went at it on their usual magnificent scale, gave a couple of hundred thousand pounds, in bills and so forth, for an overwhelming distillery on the banks of the Thames, and went on flourishing in a more flourishing way than ever.

CHAPTER II.

HOW TO DO BUSINESS.

If I were asked to express any idea of the worst description of punishment reserved for our misdeeds in a future state, I should define it to consist in a sense of utter loneliness, with every tie of previous association severed, with a consciousness only of being disconnected from all living souls.

Could such isolation exist on earth, it might, in some cases, be the very reverse of punishment; but it never happens in this world; none are so absolutely alone as not to have some friend or relative whose heart does not throb to hear of their success or failure.

Archibald Graysteel and William Handyside were neither of them exceptions to this general rule, each having families, to say nothing of friends.

Archibald Graysteel was a widower, with an only daughter, a beautiful girl about nineteen years of age, by name Euphemia. William Handyside had a wife and several children, the eldest of whom, Arthur, was a fine young man of three-and-twenty. The country houses of both the members of the firm were near each other, some six or seven miles from town, and intercourse between the families was frequent. It would have been still more intimate had it depended on Mrs. Handyside, who was extremely fond of Euphemia Graysteel, but the habits of her father were not naturally social, and he kept his daughter at home a great deal more than his friendly neighbours wished. Not enough, however, for the prevention of that consequence which is almost inevitable when least desirable.

In the eyes of the world, who saw the well mounted establishment of Mr. Handyside and the less pretentious but equally comfortable entourage of Mr. Graysteel, who heard what vast enterprises they conducted,

and who entertained the belief that they were quite as solvent as any of the gentlemen in "the Bank parlour," nothing could be more natural than the supposition that a match between Arthur Handyside and Euphemia Graysteel was the consummation not only to be wished but to be expected. It would seem that the young people thought so too, for they fell in love with each other, though, with the reticence which belongs to lovers, they did not communicate the fact to their respective parents. Concealment, however, was of little use, in one quarter. Mrs. Handyside, with a woman's penetration added to a mother's watchfulness, soon understood how matters stood, but, for certain reasons, kept her own counsel.

I may as well say what those reasons were.

Mrs. Handyside remembered, what very few, save the house of Godsend, Stiff, and Soaper recollected, that when in a much smaller way of business, many years before, the firm of Graysteel and Handyside had stopped payment. She also knew, though of this her cognizance was special, that the capital with which the firm started again would barely have sufficed to furnish the house she now lived in. She had seen some of the inner workings of her husband's mind at a time when to all appearance not a care possessed him, and all these things had taught her to distrust his actual position. The more sweeping his schemes for making a sudden fortune, the more she trembled at the possibility of a sudden reverse; and though she was ignorant of the precise nature of the transactions which were passed upon the world as bonâ fide affairs, she doubted very much-nearly as much as the house of Godsend, Stiff, and Soaper -whether they could fairly stand the light of day. Mrs. Handyside had always opposed her husband's desire to bring up Arthur to "the business," and her pertinacity had succeeded. She destined him to the law, and, after taking his degree at Cambridge, he ate his commons in the Inner Temple, and was duly called to the bar, to practise or not, as fate might determine. At all events, Arthur Handyside had a profession should it be necessary for him to gain a living by it.

He, conscious of little save the happiness he felt when in the presence of Euphemia Graysteel, gave every hour he could abstract from his compelled pursuits to her society; and she, who found no sympathy at home, gladly responded to the kind welcome of his mother, and was not slow to admit of more than a fleeting interest in himself.

If you ask for the reason of that lovers' reticence of which I have spoken, seek it of those who instinctively shrink from making the world the confidant of a secret which is all the more delicious for the secrecy by which it is surrounded. If you wish to know why it was advisable on the part of Arthur and Euphemia not to make a hasty disclosure of their mutual sentiments, there was, first, the apprehension which they entertained of refusal, and, next, the fact that the article of "settlement"though the lovers knew nothing of this-would have raised a question somewhat difficult to settle. Archibald Graysteel and William Handyside would rather not have been troubled with such a question at that moment. The concerns of the distillery required very careful attention, for it could not go on without plenty of ready money, the Excise took care of that, and plenty of ready money was only attainable by the absence of what is called "tightness" in the money market, and the existence of good

security. When "tightness" prevailed, which was the case just then, and this security had to be invented, de die in diem, I leave you to judge whether "Graysteel and Handyside" were likely to take any great delight in a proposition which must of necessity make a direct appeal to the breeches' pocket.

By dint, however, of great exertions, the distillery which eventually was to make all right, to take out every blot of fortune and stain of conscience, got on at the beginning, in popular phrase, "like a house on fire." But this simile has sometimes an unfortunate as well as a happy application, for the faster it got on, the heavier grew the demands of the polite individual (all government officials not in the post-office art polite) who acted on behalf of the Excise department; while, on the other hand, there was a constantly yawning gulf in the shape of the bills which constituted the original purchase-money, and which were always arriving at maturity.

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It is not only when adders are abroad that "wary walking," as Brutus says, is needful; when acceptances are flying about right and left, when spelter-warrants, wool-warrants, wine-warrants, tallow-warrants, all things that combine with warrants but are themselves without a warranty, deluge the markets and overflow the counters of the money-scriveners, wary walking" is not less needful than imperative. They were clever fellows, the firm of Graysteel and Handyside, but all their cleverness could not keep them out of the trap which themselves had baited. An Irish nobleman did something of the same kind lately on his own estate, which was only natural. His affair merely concerned his own legs, but the mistake of "Graysteel and Handyside" had moral consequences attached to it. They were indiscreet enough to forge their own documents, that is to say, they issued them in duplicate, there being a prepossession in the City in favour of produce of a particular description, and more than one of these duplicates fell into the hands of Messrs. Godsend, Stiff, and Soaper.

A scene accordingly took place between the head of our firm and the managing partner of that house which, briefly as it may be told, offers matter for more than brief consideration.

It opened with a note in which Archibald Graysteel was requested "to step down" to the counting-house of Messrs. Godsend, Stiff, and Soaper, in St. Withold's, "to confer upon a matter of business."

With brow unruffled and cheek unflushed, Archibald Graysteel obeyed the summons, only delaying his immediate attendance long enough to remind his partner that the firm had a good many outstanding debts in various parts of the Continent, and that it would be just as well to get some passports from the Foreign-office, in case he thought it desirable to send confidential messengers to collect what was due on the spot. William Handyside gravely replied that he had already been thinking of taking that step, and the senior member of the firm then proceeded to St. Withold's.

He was shown into the private room of the Manager, Mr. Jabez Soaper, who, like the other members of the House, was of the drab persuasion. Mr. Soaper was a large, sleek man, without an angle in his frame, and gave you the idea of a person who bathed every morning in oil, swallowing some of it in the process, which continued to ooze out