a fool
who has no business to be there. We prey upon each other, and the cutest
of us is the winner."

"But the innocent people, lured by your fine promises," I ventured once
to suggest to him, "the widows and the orphans?"

"My dear lad," he said, with a laugh, laying his fat hand upon my
shoulder, "I remember one of your widows writing me a pathetic letter
about some shares she had taken in a Silver Company of mine. Lord knows
where the mine is now--somewhere in Spain, I think. It looked as though
all her savings were gone. She had an only son, and it was nearly all
they possessed in the world, etc., etc.--you know the sort of thing.
Well, I did what I've often been numskull enough to do in similar cases,
wrote and offered to buy her out at par. A week later she answered,
thanking me, but saying it did not matter. There had occurred
a momentary rise, and she had sold out at a profit--to her own
brother-in-law, as I discovered, happening to come across the transfers.
You can find widows and orphans round the Monte Carlo card tables, if
you like to look for them; they are no more deserving of consideration
than the rest of the crowd. Besides, if it comes to that, I'm an orphan
myself;" and he laughed again, one of his deep, hearty, honest laughs.
No one ever possessed a laugh more suggestive in its every cadence
of simple, transparent honesty. He used to say himself it was worth
thousands to him.

Better from the Moralists' point of view had such a man been an
out-and-out rogue. Then might one have pointed, crying: "Behold:
Dishonesty, as you will observe in the person of our awful example, to
be hated, needs but to be seen." But the duty of the Chronicler is to
bear witness to what he knows, leaving Truth with the whole case before
her to sum up and direct the verdict. In the City, old Hasluck had a
bad reputation and deserved it; in Stoke-Newington--then a green suburb,
containing many fine old houses, standing in great wooded gardens--he
was loved and respected. In his business, he was a man void of all moral
sense, without bowels of compassion for any living thing; in retirement,
a man with a strong sense of duty and a fine regard for the rights and
feelings of others, never happier than when planning to help or give
pleasure. In his office, he would have robbed his own mother. At home,
he would have spent his last penny to add to her happiness or comfort. I
make no attempt to explain. I only know that such men d