smoke of his cigar old Heythorp had digested those figures
slowly, Joe Pillin feeling his teeth and sucking lozenges the while; then
he said:

"Sixty thousand! And out of that you pay me ten per cent., if I get it
through for you. Take it or leave it."

"My dear Sylvanus, that's almost-cynical."

"Too good a price--you'll never get it without me."

"But a--but a commission! You could never disclose it!"

"Arrange that all right. Think it over. Freights'll go lower yet. Have
some port."

"No, no! Thank you. No! So you think freights will go lower?"

"Sure of it."

"Well, I'll be going. I'm sure I don't know. It's--it's--I must think."

"Think your hardest."

"Yes, yes. Good-bye. I can't imagine how you still go on smoking those
things and drinking port.

"See you in your grave yet, Joe." What a feeble smile the poor fellow
had! Laugh-he couldn't! And, alone again, he had browsed, developing
the idea which had come to him.

Though, to dwell in the heart of shipping, Sylvanus Heythorp had lived at
Liverpool twenty years, he was from the Eastern Counties, of a family so
old that it professed to despise the Conquest. Each of its generations
occupied nearly twice as long as those of less tenacious men.
Traditionally of Danish origin, its men folk had as a rule bright
reddish-brown hair, red cheeks, large round heads, excellent teeth and
poor morals. They had done their best for the population of any county
in which they had settled; their offshoots swarmed. Born in the early
twenties of the nineteenth century, Sylvanus Heythorp, after an education
broken by escapades both at school and college, had fetched up in that
simple London of the late forties, where claret, opera, and eight per
cent. for your money ruled a cheery roost. Made partner in his shipping
firm well before he was thirty, he had sailed with a wet sheet and a
flowing tide; dancers, claret, Cliquot, and piquet; a cab with a tiger;
some travel--all that delicious early-Victorian consciousness of nothing
save a golden time. It was all so full and mellow that he was forty
before he had his only love affair of any depth--with the daughter of one
of his own clerks, a liaison so awkward as to necessitate a sedulous
concealment. The death of that girl, after three years, leaving him a,
natural son, had been the chief, perhaps the only real, sorrow of his
life. Five years later he married. What for? God only knew! as he was
in the