Miss Hazeltine; and Joseph, though he was a mild enough soul,
regarded his nephew with something very near akin to hatred. But

the way there was nothing to the journey back; for the mere sight
of the place of business, as well as every detail of its

transactions, was enough to poison life for any Finsbury.
Joseph's name was still over the door; it was he who still signed

the cheques; but this was only policy on the part of Morris, and
designed to discourage other members of the tontine. In reality

the business was entirely his; and he found it an inheritance of
sorrows. He tried to sell it, and the offers he received were

quite derisory. He tried to extend it, and it was only the
liabilities he succeeded in extending; to restrict it, and it was

only the profits he managed to restrict. Nobody had ever made
money out of that concern except the capable Scot, who retired

(after his discharge) to the neighbourhood of Banff and built a
castle with his profits. The memory of this fallacious Caledonian

Morris would revile daily, as he sat in the private office
opening his mail, with old Joseph at another table, sullenly

awaiting orders, or savagely affixing signatures to he knew not
what. And when the man of the heather pushed cynicism so far as

to send him the announcement of his second marriage (to Davida,
eldest daughter of the Revd. Alexander McCraw), it was really

supposed that Morris would have had a fit.
Business hours, in the Finsbury leather trade, had been cut to

the quick; even Morris's strong sense of duty to himself was not
strong enough to dally within those walls and under the shadow of

that bankruptcy; and presently the manager and the clerks would
draw a long breath, and compose themselves for another day of

procrastination. Raw Haste, on the authority of my Lord Tennyson,
is half-sister to Delay; but the Business Habits are certainly

her uncles. Meanwhile, the leather merchant would lead his living
investment back to John Street like a puppy dog; and, having

there immured him in the hall, would depart for the day on the
quest of seal rings, the only passion of his life. Joseph had

more than the vanity of man, he had that of lecturers. He owned
he was in fault, although more sinned against (by the capable

Scot) than sinning; but had he steeped his hands in gore, he
would still not deserve to be thus dragged at the chariot-wheels

of a young man, to sit a captive in the halls of his own leather
business, to be entertained with mortifying comments on his whole

career--to have his costume examined, his collar pulled up, the
presence of his mittens verified, and to be taken out and brought

home in custody, like an infant with a nurse. At the thought of
it his soul would swell with venom, and he would make haste to

hang up his hat and coat and the detested mittens, and slink
upstairs to Julia and his notebooks. The drawing-room at least

was sacred from Morris; it belonged to the old man and the young
girl; it was there that she made her dresses; it was there that

he inked his spectacles over the registration of disconnected
facts and the calculation of insignificant statistics.

Here he would sometimes lament his connection with the tontine.
'If it were not for that,' he cried one afternoon, 'he would not

care to keep me. I might be a free man, Julia. And I could so
easily support myself by giving lectures.'

'To be sure you could,' said she; 'and I think it one of the
meanest things he ever did to deprive you of that amusement.

There were those nice people at the Isle of Cats (wasn't it?) who
wrote and asked you so very kindly to give them an address. I did

think he might have let you go to the Isle of Cats.'
'He is a man of no intelligence,' cried Joseph. 'He lives here

literally surrounded by the absorbing spectacle of life, and for
all the good it does him, he might just as well be in his coffin.

Think of his opportunities! The heart of any other young man
would burn within him at the chance. The amount of information

that I have it in my power to convey, if he would only listen, is
a thing that beggars language, Julia.'

'Whatever you do, my dear, you mustn't excite yourself,' said
Julia; 'for you know, if you look at all ill, the doctor will be

sent for.'
'That is very true,' returned the old man humbly, 'I will compose

myself with a little study.' He thumbed his gallery of notebooks.
'I wonder,' he said, 'I wonder (since I see your hands are

occupied) whether it might not interest you--'
'Why, of course it would,' cried Julia. 'Read me one of your nice

stories, there's a dear.'
He had the volume down and his spectacles upon his nose

instanter, as though to forestall some possible retractation.
'What I propose to read to you,' said he, skimming through the

pages, 'is the notes of a highly important conversation with a
Dutch courier of the name of David Abbas, which is the Latin for

abbot. Its results are well worth the money it cost me, for, as
Abbas at first appeared somewhat impatient, I was induced to

(what is, I believe, singularly called) stand him drink. It runs
only to about five-and-twenty pages. Yes, here it is.' He cleared

his throat, and began to read.
Mr Finsbury (according to his own report) contributed about four

hundred and ninety-nine five-hundredths of the interview, and
elicited from Abbas literally nothing. It was dull for Julia, who

did not require to listen; for the Dutch courier, who had to
answer, it must have been a perfect nightmare. It would seem as

if he had consoled himself by frequent appliances to the bottle;
it would even seem that (toward the end) he had ceased to depend

on Joseph's frugalgenerosity and called for the flagon on his
own account. The effect, at least, of some mellowing influence

was visible in the record: Abbas became suddenly a willing
witness; he began to volunteer disclosures; and Julia had just

looked up from her seam with something like a smile, when Morris
burst into the house, eagerlycalling for his uncle, and the next

instant plunged into the room, waving in the air the evening
paper.

It was indeed with great news that he came charged. The demise
was announced of Lieutenant-General Sir Glasgow Biggar, KCSI,

KCMG, etc., and the prize of the tontine now lay between the
Finsbury brothers. Here was Morris's opportunity at last. The

brothers had never, it is true, been cordial. When word came that
Joseph was in Asia Minor, Masterman had expressed himself with

irritation. 'I call it simply indecent,' he had said. 'Mark my
words--we shall hear of him next at the North Pole.' And these

bitter expressions had been reported to the traveller on his
return. What was worse, Masterman had refused to attend the

lecture on 'Education: Its Aims, Objects, Purposes, and
Desirability', although invited to the platform. Since then the

brothers had not met. On the other hand, they never had openly
quarrelled; Joseph (by Morris's orders) was prepared to waive the

advantage of his juniority; Masterman had enjoyed all through
life the reputation of a man neither greedy nor unfair. Here,

then, were all the elements of compromise assembled; and Morris,
suddenly beholding his seven thousand eight hundred pounds

restored to him, and himself dismissed from the vicissitudes of
the leather trade, hastened the next morning to the office of his

cousin Michael.
Michael was something of a public character. Launched upon the

law at a very early age, and quite without protectors, he had
become a trafficker in shady affairs. He was known to be the man

for a lost cause; it was known he could extracttestimony from a
stone, and interest from a gold-mine; and his office was besieged

in consequence by all that numerous class of persons who have
still some reputation to lose, and find themselves upon the point

of losing it; by those who have made undesirable acquaintances,
who have mislaid a compromising correspondence, or who are