Kitabı oku: «Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 3», sayfa 18

CHAPTER VII

The sudden and unexpected rebuff encountered by Mr. Gammon, in the Vulture Insurance Company's refusal to pay the policy on the late Lady Stratton's life, was calculated seriously to embarrass his complicated movements. He foresaw the protracted and harassing course of litigation into which he should be driven, before he could compel them to liquidate so heavy a claim; and a glimpse of which, by way of anticipation, has been afforded to the reader; but, with all his long-headedness—his habitual contemplation of the probable and possible effects and consequences of whatever event happened to him—this refusal of the directors to pay the policy was attended with results which defied his calculations—results of such a description, and of such signal importance, as will perhaps surprise the reader, and serve to illustrate, in a striking manner, the controlling agency which is at work in the conduct of human affairs—an agency to which the principles of Mr. Gammon denied an existence. Nor was this the only trouble—the only reverse—which about this period occurred to him; and not a little perplexed was he to account for such a sudden confluence of adverse circumstances as he by-and-by experienced, when he found the truth of the King of Denmark's observation,—

 
"When sorrows come—they come not single spies,
But IN BATTALIONS."¹¹
 

On applying at Doctor's Commons, in the ordinary way, for a grant, to Mr. Titmouse, of Letters of Administration to Lady Stratton, Mr. Gammon discovered the existence of a little document, for which he certainly was not entirely unprepared, but which, nevertheless, somewhat disconcerted him: principally on account of the additional plea it would afford the Vulture Company for resisting payment of the policy. How, indeed, could they be expected to pay a sum of such magnitude, to a person whose title to receive it was disputed by another claimant? The document alluded to was a CAVEAT, and ran thus:—

"Let nothing be done in the goods of Dame Mary Stratton, late of Warkleigh, in the parish of Warkleigh, in the county of York, deceased, unknown to Obadiah Pounce, proctor for John Thomas, having interest."

Now, the reader will observe that this "John Thomas" is, like the "John Doe" of the common lawyers, a mere man of straw; so that this peremptory, but mysterious mandate, would afford an inquirer no information as to either the name of the party intending to resist the grant of administration, or the grounds of such resistance. Mr. Gammon, however, very naturally concluded that the move was made on the behalf of Mr. Aubrey, and that the ground of his opposition was the alleged will of Lady Stratton. To be prepared for such an encounter when the time arrived, he had noted down, very carefully, the important admissions which had been made to him by Mr. Parkinson; and having, for a while, disposed of this affair, he betook himself to the great conspiracy case which I have already mentioned; and, in bringing which to a successful issue, he unquestionably exhibited great ability, and deserved the compliments paid him on the occasion by the counsel, whose labors he had, by his lucid arrangement, materially abbreviated and lightened. This matter also over, and fairly off his mind, he addressed himself to an affair, then pending, of great importance to himself personally—viz. a certain cause of Wigley v. Gammon; which, together with the three other special jury causes in which the same person was plaintiff, was to come on for trial at York early in the second week of the assizes, which were to commence within a few days' time. As already intimated, Mr. Subtle had been retained for the plaintiff in all the actions, together with Mr. Sterling and Mr. Crystal; and, as Mr. Quicksilver had become Lord Blossom and Box, Mr. Gammon was sorely perplexed for a leader—his junior, of course, being Mr. Lynx. He had retained a Mr. Wilmington to lead for the other three defendants—a man of undoubted ability, experienced, acute, dexterous, witty, and eloquent, and exceedingly well qualified to conduct such a case as Mr. Gammon's: but that gentleman got exceedingly nervous about the matter as the day of battle drew near—and, at length, resolved on taking down special Sir Charles Wolstenholme. Now, I do not see why he should have thought it necessary to go to so enormous an expense when such able assistance could have been had upon the circuit—but, however, down went that eminent personage. Their consultation was gloomy; Sir Charles acknowledging that he felt great apprehension as to the result, from the witnesses who were likely to be produced on the other side.

"It's a pity that we haven't the Yatton election committee to deal with, Mr. Gammon!" said Sir Charles, with a sly sarcastic smile. "We've rather a different tribunal to go before now—eh?"

Mr. Gammon smiled—how miserably!—shook his head, and shrugged his shoulders. "We manage these matters rather differently in a court of law!" continued Sir Charles, with a fearful significance!

When the important morning of the trial arrived, there was a special jury sworn, consisting of gentlemen of the county—of integrity and independence—above all suspicion. Mr. Subtle opened a shockingly clear and strong case, to be sure; and what was worse, he proved it, and so as to carry conviction to the minds of all in court. Sir Charles felt his opponent's case to be impregnable; and, in spite of several acute and severe cross-examinations, and a masterly speech, the stern and upright judge who tried the cause, summed up dead against the defendant, with many grave remarks on the profligate and systematic manner in which it appeared that the offences had been committed. After a brief consultation, the jury returned into court with a verdict for the plaintiff, in the sum of £2,500; that is, for five penalties of £500!¹² A similar result ensued in each of the two following cases of Wigley v. Mudflint, and Wigley v. Bloodsuck; both of whom seemed completely stupefied at an issue so totally different from that which they had been led to expect, by the very different view of things which had been taken by the election committee. As for Mudflint, from what quarter under heaven he was to get the means of satisfying that truly diabolical verdict, he could not conjecture; and his face became several shades sallower as soon as he had heard his doom pronounced; but Bloodsuck, who had turned quite white, whispered in his ear, that of course Mr. Titmouse would see them harmless–

"Oh Lord!" however, muttered Mudflint, in a cold perspiration—"I should like to hear Mr. Gammon recommending him to do so, under circumstances!"

Poor Woodlouse was more fortunate—somehow or another he contrived to creep and wriggle out of the danger! Whether from his utter insignificance, or from the circumstance of the destructive verdicts against Gammon, Mudflint, and Bloodsuck having satiated the avenger, I know not; but the case was not pressed very strongly against him, and the jury took a most merciful view of the evidence. But alas! what a shock this gave to the Liberal cause in Yatton! How were the mighty fallen! As soon after this melancholy result as Messrs. Mudflint and Bloodsuck had recovered their presence of mind sufficiently to discuss the matter together, they were clearly of opinion—were those brethren in distress—that Mr. Titmouse was bound, both in law and honor, to indemnify them against the consequences of acts done solely on his behalf, and at his implied request. They made the thing very clear, indeed, to Mr. Gammon, who listened to them with marked interest and attention, and undertook "to endeavor to convince" Mr. Titmouse of the justice of their claims; secretly resolving, also, not to lose sight of his own: nay, in fact, he made sure of satisfying Mr. Titmouse on that score. But the personal liability which, in the first instance, he had thus incurred, to an extent of upwards of £3,000, supposing him, by any accident, to fail in recouping himself out of the assets of Mr. Titmouse, was not the only unfortunate consequence of this serious miscarriage. Such a verdict as had passed against Mr. Gammon places a man in a very awkward and—if one may use the word—nasty position before the public, and renders it rather difficult for him to set himself right again. 'T is really a serious thing to stand convicted of the offence of bribery; it makes a man look very sheepish indeed, ever after, especially in political life. 'T is such a beam in a man's own eye, to be pulled out before he can see the mote in his neighbor's!—and Mr. Gammon felt this. Then again, he had received a pledge from a very eminent member of the government, to be performed in the event of his being able to secure the seat for Yatton on a general election, (which was considered not unlikely to happen within a few months;) but this accursed verdict was likely to prove an insurmountable obstacle in the way of his advancement; and his chagrin and vexation may be easily imagined. He conceived a wonderful hatred of the supposed instigator of these unprincipled and vindictive proceedings, Lord De la Zouch—who seemed to have put them up like four birds to be shot at, and brought down, one by one, as his Lordship chose! As soon as these four melancholy causes above mentioned were over—Gammon considering himself bound, on the score of bare decency, to remain till his fellow-sufferers had been disposed of—he went off to Yatton, to see how matters were going on there.

Alas! what a state of things existed there! Good old Yatton, and all about it, seemed wofully changed for the worse, since the departure of the excellent Aubreys and the accession of Mr. Titmouse. The local superintendence of his interests had been intrusted by Gammon to the Messrs. Bloodsuck; who had found their business, in consequence, so much increasing, as to require the establishment of Mr. Barnabas Bloodsuck at Yatton, while his father remained at Grilston; their partnership, however, continuing. He had, accordingly, run up a thin slip of a place at the end of the village farthest from the park gates, and within a few yards of the house in which old Blind Bess had ended her days. He was the first attorney that had ever lived in Yatton. There was a particularly impudent and priggish air about his residence. The door was painted a staring mahogany color, and bore a bright brass plate, with the words—"Messrs. Bloodsuck & Son, Attorneys and Solicitors"—words which shot terror into the heart of many a passer-by, especially the tenants of Mr. Titmouse. At the moment, for instance, of Mr. Gammon's arrival at Yatton, on the present occasion, actions for rent, and other matters, were actually pending against fourteen of the poorer tenants!! 'T was all up with them, as soon as the Messrs. Bloodsuck were fairly fastened upon them. Let them be a day or two in arrear with their rent, a cognovit, or warrant of attorney—for the sake of the costs it produced—was instantly proposed; and, if the expensive security were demurred to by the poor souls, by that night's post went up instructions to town for writs to be sent down by return! If some of the more resolute questioned the propriety of a distress made upon them with cruel precipitancy, they found themselves immediately involved in a replevin suit, from whose expensive intricacies they were at length glad to escape, terrified, on any terms. Then actions of trespass, and so forth, were commenced upon the most frivolous pretexts. Old and convenient rights of way were suddenly disputed, and made the subjects of expensive lawsuits. Many of the former quiet inhabitants of the village had been forced out of it, their places being supplied by persons of a very different description; and a bad state of feeling, chiefly arising out of political rancor, had, for instance, just given rise to three actions—two of assault and one of slander—from that once peaceful little village, and which had been tried at those very assizes! Poor Miss Aubrey's village school, alas! had been transmogrified into a chapel for Mr. Mudflint, where he rallied round him every Sunday an excited throng of ignorant and disaffected people, and regaled them with seditious and blasphemous harangues. 'T would have made your hair stand on end to hear the language in which he spoke of the sacred mysteries of the Christian religion—it would have filled you with disgust and indignation to hear his attacks upon the Church of England and its ministers, and in particular upon dear little exemplary unoffending old Dr. Tatham, whom he described as "battening upon cant, hypocrisy, and extortion." Strange and melancholy to relate, this novel mode of procedure on the part of Mr. Mudflint for a while succeeded. In vain did the white-haired and learned vicar preach his very best sermons, and in his very best manner—he beheld his church thinning, while the chapel of Mr. Mudflint was filled. And, as he went about the village in the zealous, and vigilant, and affectionate discharge of his pastoral duties, he perceived symptoms, now and then, of a grievously altered manner towards him, on the part of those who had once hailed his approach and his ministrations with a kind of joyful reverence and cordiality. Mudflint had also, in furtherance of his purpose of bitter hostility, in concert with his worthy coadjutors the Bloodsucks, stirred up two or three persons in the parish to resist the doctor's claim to tithe, and to offer harassing obstructions to the collecting of it. In justice to the Church, and to his successors, he could not permit his rights to be thus questioned and denied with impunity—and thus, to his sore grief, the worthy old vicar found himself, for the first time in his life, involved in a couple of lawsuits, which he feared, even if he won them, would ruin him. It may be imagined that Mudflint's discomfiture at the assizes was calculated to send him, like a scotched snake, writhing, hissing, and snapping, through the village, at all that came in his way. It is possible that Mr. Gammon was not so fully apprised of all these doings, as is now the reader; yet he saw and heard enough to lead him to suspect that things were going a little too far. He took, however, no steps towards effecting an abatement or discontinuance of them. Just at present, moreover, he was peculiarly reluctant to interfere with any of the proceedings of the Messrs. Bloodsuck, and confined himself to receiving their report as to some arrangements which he had desired them to carry into effect. In the first place, he did not disclose the existence of his heavy and newly created rent-charge, but gave them to understand that Mr. Titmouse's circumstances were such as to make it requisite to extract as much from the property as could possibly be obtained, by raising the rents—by effecting a further mortgage upon the property, and by a sale of all the timber that was fit for felling. It was found necessary to look out for new tenants to one or two of the largest farms on the estate, as the old tenants declared themselves unable to sustain the exorbitant rents which they were called upon to pay; so orders were given to advertise for tenants, in the county, and other newspapers. Then Mr. Gammon went all over the estate, to view the condition of the timber, attended by the sullen and reluctant wood-bailiff, who, though he retained his situation, mortally hated his new master, and all connected with him. Very little timber was, according to his account, fit for felling! Having looked into these various matters, Mr. Gammon took his departure for town, glad to escape, though for never so brief an interval, the importunities of Messrs. Mudflint and Bloodsuck, on the subject of the late verdicts against them, and which he pledged himself to represent in a proper way to Mr. Titmouse. On arriving in town, he lost no time in waiting upon the great man to whom he looked for the political advancement after which his soul pined. He was received with manifest coolness, evidently occasioned by the position in which he had been placed by the verdict in the action for the bribery penalties. What the great man objected to, be it understood, was not Mr. Gammon's having bribed, but having done it in such a way as to admit of detection! On solemnly assuring his patron, however, that the verdict was entirely against evidence, and that Sir Charles Wolstenholme was, in the next term, going to move for a rule to set aside the verdict on that ground, and also on several other grounds, and that, by such means, the cause could be, at the very least, "hung up" for heaven only knew how long to come—till, in short, people had forgotten all about it—the clouds slowly disappeared from the great man's brow, especially on his being assured that Gammon's return for Yatton, on the next vacancy, was a matter of absolute certainty. Then he gave Mr. Gammon certain assurances which flushed his cheek with delight and triumph—delight and triumph inspired by a conviction that his deeply-laid schemes, his comprehensive plans, were, despite a few minor and temporary checks and reverses, being crowned with success. It was true that his advances towards Miss Aubrey appeared to have been hopelessly repelled; but he resolved to wait till the time should have arrived for bringing other reserved forces into the field—by the aid of which he yet hoped to make an equally unexpected and decisive demonstration.

The more immediate object of his anxieties, was to conceal as far as possible his connection with the various joint-stock speculations, into which he had entered with a wild and feverish eagerness to realize a rapid fortune. He had already withdrawn from one or two with which he had been only for a brief time, and secretly, connected—not, however, until he had realized no inconsiderable sum by his judicious but somewhat unscrupulous operations. He was also anxious, if practicable, to extricate Lord Dreddlington, at the proper conjuncture, with as little damage as possible to his Lordship's fortune or character: for his Lordship's countenance and good offices were becoming of greater consequence to Mr. Gammon than ever. It was true that he possessed information—I mean that concerning Titmouse's birth and true position—which he considered would, whenever he thought fit to avail himself of it, give him an absolute mastery over the unhappy peer for the rest of his life; but he felt that it would be a critical and dreadful experiment, and not to be attempted but in the very last resort. He would sometimes gaze at the unconscious earl, and speculate in a sort of revery upon the possible effects attending the dreaded disclosure, till he would give a sort of inward start as he realized the fearful and irretrievable extent to which he had committed himself. He shuddered also to think that he was, moreover, in a measure, at the mercy of Titmouse himself—who, in some mad moment of drunkenness or desperation, or of pique or revenge, might disclose the fatal secret, and precipitate upon him, when least prepared for them, all its long-dreaded consequences. The slender faculties of Lord Dreddlington had been for months in a state of novel and grateful excitement, through the occupation afforded them by his connection with the fashionable modes of commercial enterprise—joint-stock companies, the fortunate members of which got rich they scarcely knew how. It seemed as though certain persons had but to acquire a nominal interest in some great transaction of this sort, to find it pouring wealth into their coffers, as if by magic; and it was thus that Lord Dreddlington, among others, found himself quietly realizing very considerable sums of money, without apparent risk or exertion—his movements being skilfully guided by Gammon, and one or two others, who, while they treated him as a mere instrument to aid in effecting their own purposes in deluding the public, yet contrived to impress him with the flattering notion that he was, in a masterly manner, directing their course of procedure, and richly entitled to their deference and gratitude. 'T was, indeed, ecstasy to poor old Lord Dreddlington to behold his name, from time to time, glittering in the van—himself figuring away as a chief patron—a prime mover—in some vast and lucrative undertaking, which, almost from the first moment of its projection, attracted the notice and confidence of the moneyed classes, and became productive to its originators! Many attempts were made by his brother peers, and those who once had considerable influence over him, to open his eyes to the very questionable nature of the concerns to which he was so freely lending the sanction of his name and personal interference; but his pride and obstinacy caused him to turn a deaf ear to their suggestions; and the skilful and delicious flatteries of Mr. Gammon and others, seconded by the substantial fruits of his fancied skill and energy, urged him on from step to step, till he became one of the most active and constant in his interference with the concerns of one or two great speculations, such as have been mentioned in a former part of this history, and from which he looked forward to realizing, at no very distant day, the most resplendent results. Never, in fact, had one man obtained over another a more complete mastery, than had Mr. Gammon over the Earl of Dreddlington; at whose exclusive table he was a frequent guest, and thereby obtained opportunities of acquiring the good-will of one or two other persons of the earl's intellectual status and calibre.

His Lordship was sitting in his library (his table covered with letters and papers) one morning, with a newspaper—the Morning Growl—lying in his lap, and a certain portion of the aforesaid newspaper he had read over several times with exquisite satisfaction. He had, late on the preceding evening, returned from his seat in Hertfordshire, whither he had been suddenly called on business, early in the morning; so that it was not until the time at which he is now presented to the reader, that his Lordship had had an opportunity of perusing what was now affording him such gratification; viz. a brief, but highly flattering report of a splendid whitebait dinner which had been given to him the day before at Blackwall, by a party of some thirty gentlemen, who were, inter nos, most adroit and successful traders upon that inexhaustible capital, public credulity, as founders, managers, and directors, of various popular joint-stock companies; and the progress of which, in public estimation, had been materially accelerated by the countenance of so distinguished a nobleman as the Right Hon. the Earl of Dreddlington, G. C. B., &c. &c. &c.¹³ When his Lordship's carriage—containing himself, in evening dress, and wearing his red ribbon, and one or two foreign orders, and also his son-in-law, the member for Yatton, who was dressed in the highest style of fashionable elegance—drew up opposite the doorway of the hotel, he was received, on alighting, by several of those who had assembled to do him honor, in the same sort of flattering and reverential manner which you may conceive would be exhibited by a party of great East India directors, on the occasion of their giving a banquet to a newly-appointed Governor-General of India! Covers had been laid for thirty-five, and the entertainment was in all respects of the most sumptuous description—every way worthy of the entertainers and their distinguished guest. Not far from the earl sat Mr. Gammon. Methinks I see now his gentlemanly figure—his dark-blue coat, white waistcoat, and simple black stock—his calm smile, his keen watchful eye, his well-developed forehead, suggesting to you a capability of the highest kind of intellectual action. There was a subdued cheerfulness in his manner, which was bland and fascinating as ever; and towards the great man of the day, he exhibited such a marked air of deference as was, indeed, to the object of it, most delicious and seductive. The earl soon mounted into the seventh heaven of delight; he had never experienced anything of this sort before; he felt glorified—for such qualities were attributed to him in the after-dinner speeches, as even he had not before imagined the existence of in himself; his ears were ravished with the sound of his own praises. He was infinitely more intoxicated by the magnificent compliments which he received, than by the very unusual, but still not excessive, quantity of champagne which he had half unconsciously taken during dinner; the combined effect of them being to produce a state of delightful excitement which he had never known before. Mr. Titmouse, M. P., also came in for his share of laudation, and made—said the report in the Morning Growl—a brief but very spirited speech, in return for the compliment of his health being proposed. At length, it being time to think of returning to town, his Lordship withdrew, Sir Sharper Bubble, (the chairman,) and others, attending him bareheaded to his carriage, which, his Lordship and Titmouse having entered, drove off amid the bows and courteous inclinations of the gentlemen standing upon and around the steps. Titmouse almost immediately fell asleep, overpowered by the prodigious quantity of wine which he had swallowed; and thus left the earl, who was himself in a much more buoyant humor than was usual with him, to revel in the recollection of the homage which he had been receiving. Now, this was the affair, of which a very flourishing though brief account (privately paid for by the gentleman who sent it) appeared in the Morning Growl, with a most magnificent speech of his Lordship's about free trade, and the expansive principles of commercial enterprise, and so forth: 't was true, that the earl had no recollection of having either meditated the delivery of any such speech, or of having actually delivered it—but he might have done so for all that, and possibly did. He read over the whole account several times, as I have already said; and at the moment of his being presented to the reader, sitting in his easy-chair, and with the newspaper in his lap, he was in a very delightful state of feeling. He secretly owned to himself that he was not entirely undeserving of the compliments which had been paid to him. Considerably advanced though he was in life, he was consciously developing energies commensurate with the exigencies which called for their display—energies which had long lain dormant for want of such opportunities. What practical tact and judgment he felt conscious of exhibiting, while directing the experienced energies of mercantile men and capitalists! How proud and delighted was he at the share he was taking in steering the commercial enterprise of the country into proper quarters, and to proper objects; and, moreover, while he was thus benefiting his country, he was also sensibly augmenting his own private revenue. In his place in the House of Lords, also, he displayed a wonderful energy, and manifested surprising interest in all mercantile questions started there. He was, consequently, nominated one of a committee (into the appointment of which he and one or two others like him had teased and worried their Lordships) to inquire into the best mode of facilitating the formation, and extending the operations, of Joint-Stock Companies; and asked at least four times as many questions of the witnesses called before them, as any other member of the committee. He also began to feel still loftier aspirations. His Lordship was not without hopes that the declining health of Sir Miserable Muddle, the president of the Board of Trade, would soon open a prospect for his Lordship's accession to office, as the successor of that enlightened statesman; feeling conscious that the mercantile part of the community would look with great approbation upon so satisfactory an appointment, and that thereby the king's government would be materially strengthened. As for matter of a more directly business character, I may mention that his Lordship was taking active measures towards organizing a company for the purchase of the Isle of Dogs, and working the invaluable mines of copper, lead, and coal which lay underneath. These and other matters fully occupied his Lordship's attention, and kept him from morning to night in a pleasurable state of excitement and activity. Still he had his drawbacks. The inexorable premier continued to turn a deaf ear to all his solicitations for a marquisate—till he began to entertain the notion of transferring his support to the opposition; and, in fact, he resolved upon doing so, if another session should have elapsed without his receiving the legitimate reward of his steadfast adherence to the Liberal cause. Then again he became more and more sensible that Lady Cecilia was not happy in her union with Mr. Titmouse, and that his conduct was not calculated to make her so; in fact, his Lordship began to suspect that there was a total incompatibility of tempers and dispositions, which would inevitably force on a separation—under existing circumstances a painful step, and evidently unadvisable. His Lordship's numerous inquiries of Mr. Gammon as to the state of Mr. Titmouse's property, met occasionally with unsatisfactory, and (as any one of clearer head than his Lordship would have seen) most inconsistent answers. Mr. Titmouse's extravagant expenditure was a matter of notoriety; the earl himself had been once or twice compelled to come forward, in order to assist in relieving his son-in-law's house from executions; and he repeatedly reasoned and remonstrated with Mr. Titmouse on the impropriety of many parts of his conduct—Titmouse generally acknowledging, with much appearance of compunction and sincerity, that the earl had too much ground for complaint, and protesting that he meant to change altogether one of these days. Indeed, matters would soon have been brought to a crisis between the earl and Titmouse, had not the former been so constantly immersed in business, as to prevent his mind from dwelling upon the various instances of Titmouse's misconduct which from time to time came under his notice. The condition of Lady Cecilia was one which gave the earl anxiety and interest. She was enceinte; and the prospect which this afforded the earl, of the family honors continuing in a course of direct descent, gave him unspeakable satisfaction. Thus is it, in short, that no one's cup is destitute of some ingredients of bitterness or of happiness; that the wheat and the tares—happiness and anxiety—grow up together. The above will suffice to indicate the course taken by his Lordship's thoughts on the present occasion. He sat back in his chair in a sort of revery; having laid down his paper, and placed his gold spectacles on the little stand beside him, where lay also his massive old gold repeater. The Morning Growl of that morning was very late, owing to the arrival of foreign news; but it was brought in to his Lordship just as he was beginning to open his letters. These his Lordship laid aside for a moment, in order to skim over the contents of his paper; on which he had not been long engaged, before his eye lit upon a paragraph which gave him a dreadful shock, blanching his cheek, and throwing him into an universal tremor. He read it over several times, almost doubting whether he could be reading correctly. It is possible that the experienced reader may not be taken as much by surprise as was the Earl of Dreddlington; but the intelligence conveyed by the paragraph in question was simply this—that the Artificial Rain Company had, so to speak, suddenly evaporated!—and that this result had been precipitated by the astounding discovery in the City, in the preceding afternoon, that the managing director of the Company had bolted with all the available funds of the society—and who should this be but the gentleman who had presided so ably the evening but one before, over the Blackwall dinner to his Lordship, viz. Sir Sharper Bubble!!! The plain fact was, that that worthy had at that very time completed all arrangements necessary for taking the very decisive step on which he had determined; and within an hour's time of handing the Earl of Dreddlington to his carriage, in the way that has been described, had slipped into a boat moored by the water side, and got safely on board a fine brig bound for America, just as she was hauling up anchor, and spreading forth her canvas before a strong steady west wind, which was at that moment bearing him, under the name of Mr. Snooks, rapidly away from the artificial and unsatisfactory state of things which prevailed in the Old World, to a new one, where he hoped there would not exist such impediments in the way of extended commercial enterprise. As soon as the earl had a little recovered from the agitation into which this announcement had thrown him, he hastily rang his bell, and ordered his carriage to be got instantly in readiness. Having put the newspaper into his pocket, he was soon on his way, at a great speed, towards the Poultry, in the City, where was the office of the Company, with the faintest glimmer of a hope that there might be some mistake about the matter. Ordering his servant to let him out the instant that the carriage drew up, the earl, not allowing his servant to anticipate him, got down and rang the bell, the outer door being closed, although it was now twelve o'clock. The words "Artificial Rain Company" still shone in gilt letters half a foot long, on the green blind of the window. But all was—still—deserted—dry as Gideon's fleece! An old woman presently answered his summons. She said she believed the business was given up; and there had been a good many gentlemen inquiring about it—that he was welcome to go in—but there was nobody in except her and a little child. With an air of inconceivable agitation, his Lordship went into the lower offices. All was silent; no clerks, no servants, no porters or messengers; no books, or prospectuses, or writing materials. "I've just given everything a good dusting, sir," said she to the earl, at the same wiping off a little dust with the corner of her apron, which had escaped her. Then the earl went up-stairs into the "Board Room." There, also, all was silent and deserted, and very clean and in good order. There was the green baize-covered table, at which he had often sat, presiding over the enlightened deliberations of the directors! The earl gazed in silent stupor about him.