The Market-Place

ime consumed in making what, by the map, should be so brief a journey. In Thorpe's own compartment, men spoke with savage irony of cyclists alleged to be passing

lder discussion as to whether the South Eastern or the Brighton was really the worst followed naturally in its wake, and occupied its accustomed half-hour-complicated, however, upon thi

ned attack upon the newcomer. He was evidently incapable, their remarks implied, of knowing a bad railway when he saw one. To suggest that the characterless and inoffensive Chatham-and-Dover, so commonplace in its tame virtues, was to be mentioned in

t all; if he had ever known the Southern lines apart, they were all one to him now. He looked out of

he stood on the platform, superintending the porter's efforts to find his bags. He turned it over and over in his thoughts, in the hansom, more to familiarize himself with its details t

irty with age, which had a doorway of its own in a corner of the court-and Thorpe pus

t a trace of unnecessary politeness, or humour, or sensibility of any sort. He was the machine perfected and fined down to absolute essentials. He could understand a joke if it was useful to him to do so. He could drink, and even smoke cigarettes, with a natural air, if these exercises seemed properly to belong to the task he had in hand. Thorpe did not conceive him doing anything for the

s serious, thin lips relax for an instant as a d

n-hour?" asked Thorpe in tur

ll we're stopped," and seated himself on the corner of the desk with the light inconsequence

of many sleepless nights' cogitations. "I'm going to leave England almost im

in silence. "Well?"

ea, don't you?"

his shoulders slight

a month or two somebody notices that I'm not about, and he happens to mention it to somebody else-and so there gets to be the impression that things haven't gone well with me, d'ye see? On the same plan, I let all the clerks at my office go. The Sec

lement you're thinking

Naturally, then, our play is to concentrate everything on getting it granted. We don't want to raise the remotest shadow of a suspicion of what we're up to, till after we're safe past that rock. So we go on in the way to attract the least possible attention. You or

ity of manner. "There was a sermon of my father's that I remember, and it had for its t

or you. I know the sum you've laid out already, in working this thing. We'll say that that is to be paid back to you, as a separate transaction, and we'll put that to one side. Now

em, either," interposed Semple,

ciously as he did so. "No, what I want to get at is your idea

d pounds," said

had thought thirty would be a fairer figure

people rather disposed to distrust a man who pr

I'm built. Why"-he halted to consider the advisability of disclosing what he had promised to do for Lord Plowden, and decided against it-"why, without you, what would the whole thing have been worth to me? Take one thing alone-the

per cent. for the four months, they'll be very pleased. And so I shall be very pleased to take thirty thousand ins

o do is this," he said, looking up. "I'll make the promise for thirty-two thousand, and I'll get you to let me have two thousand in cash now-a personal

he Christmas holidays. That is nearly three months. Then the work of taking fort-ni

housand pounds now,"

h down, NOT vendor's shares, you observe-and then I will take your acknowledgment that you hold them for me in trust up to a given date. In that w

his first smile. "I like to hold shares that are

s, accepting the wording which Semple suggested from his perch on the desk,

d over his shoulder. "Are you

It'll warm their hearts toward me. I shan't be going till the end of

had business in Frankfort once, and in Rott

pleasure?" Thorpe asked him, as he f

oker, lightly. "It's a pleasure, for e

ith an apologetic laugh. "I didn't tell you, did I? I've been spending

ery well," obser

ople down to, then? That isn't

of us, of course, but a decent chap all through. Place? I should think he HAD got a place! It's one of the swellest old country-houses you ever s

en his hat, and was smoothing it

nts all over the place, and about the best shooting I've seen in the South of England. As luck would have it, I was in wonderful form. God! how I knocked the pheasants!" A clerk showed his head at the doo

ining in his pocket. He had been as anxious about pence as the hungriest of those poor devils, only a week before. And now! He thrust up the door in the roof of the cab, and bade the driver stop at his bank. Thence, after some brief but very agreeable business, and a hurried inspection of the "Court" section

t his luggage to his rooms. There were no letters for him on the board in the hallway, and he sauntered up to the Strand

a dismal and graceless antiquity of narrow purposes and niggling thrift. It was so little like the antiquity, for example, of Hadlow House, that the two might have computed their age by the chronological system

ould not have been more devoid of intellectual suggestions if he had been posted in a Wiltshire field to frighten crows with a rattle, instead of being set here in the highway of the world's brain-movement, an agent of students and philosophers. Thorpe wondered if in his time he could have looked such a vacant and sour young fool. No-no. That could not be. Boy

hought struck him that very likely at this identical doorway, two generations back, a poor, out-at-the-elbows, young law-student named Plowden had stood and turned over pages of books he could not dream of buying. Perhaps, even, he had ventured inside, and deferentially picked acquaint

narrow passage between the tall rows of books, to the small open space at the end

p all right." He announced

he remarked, turning to him, after a

horpe' here and 'Mr. Thorpe' there, all over the place. Ladies of title, mind you-all to myself at breakfast two d

an expression of his thought. "I'm just turned forty, and I feel like a boy. I was looking at that 'Peerage' there, the other day-and do you know, I'm sixt

Plowden family on the

el as if I was at the very least a nephew of hers. And so simple and natural! She smiled at me, and listened to

mile. "Why, of course, you'll know her," he protested. "What nonsense you're thinking of! Do you suppose I'm going to allow you to mess about here with second-hand alman

yet, for one thing. And as I said the other night, if you want to do things for the children, tha

he instant another plan began to unfol

r it's called-and he got special terms for her. She was rather old, you know, to go to school, but he arranged it very nicely for her-and there is such a good boys'

" the uncle of

pretty-and then again I can't think it. She's got good features, and she holds herself well, and she's very much the lady-rather too much, I think, so

about the Dabneys. "And wh

was a perceptible note of appreh

t way?" demanded Thorpe, with reproof in his

tor," she replied with dignity.

onfidence trick-medicine is-and if you haven't got just the right twist of the wrist, you're not in it. But an artist stands on his merits. There is his work-done by his own hands. It speaks for itself. There's no deception-it's easy enough to tell whether

l. I had a bitter enough dose of that, myself, with father. I'd try to guide a youngster, yes, and perhaps argue with him, if I thought he was making a jack of himself-but I wou

aid when it was finished. "Perhaps he wouldn't have made a good doctor; he's got a very quick temper. He reminds

orpe. "I mean, he's got his likable points?

would be different. You see, his father was ill all those four years, and Alfred hated the shop as bad a

n? That puts it in a

swer. "My only fear is-whether you wo

ng on the Continent in a few days' time, to stay for three or four months. I've got nothing special to do-just to travel about and see things and kill time-I shall probably go to Italy and Switzerland and Paris and the Rhine and all sorts of places-and it occurred

e paid for up to Christmas,"

e? I could go and buy their damned colleges, and let the kids wear them for breastpins if I wanted to. You said the girl was going to quit at Christmas

mething of him. Whatever he's going to do, it's time that he began getting his special start for it." He added, upon a lumin

d in their way. Ever since you sent that four hundred pounds, it hasn't seemed as if they were my children at all. They've scarcely listened to me. And now you come, and propose to take them out o

et her ready-only you

ll give you back that thirty," he said, as he wrote, "and here's a hundred to get th

e shop, and Thorpe made i

ous of a thought which seemed to spell itself out in visible letters before h