way.

He had been occasionally in partnership with one man for one thing,
and then with another for another; but had, on the whole, kept his
interests to himself, and now at the time of our story, he was a very
rich man.

And he had acquired more than wealth. There had been a time when the
Government wanted the immediate performance of some extraordinary
piece of work, and Roger Scatcherd had been the man to do it. There
had been some extremely necessary bit of a railway to be made in half
the time that such work would properly demand, some speculation to
be incurred requiring great means and courage as well, and Roger
Scatcherd had been found to be the man for the time. He was then
elevated for the moment to the dizzy pinnacle of a newspaper hero,
and became one of those "whom the king delighteth to honour." He went
up one day to kiss Her Majesty's hand, and come down to his new grand
house at Boxall Hill, Sir Roger Scatcherd, Bart.

"And now, my lady," said he, when he explained to his wife the high
state to which she had been called by his exertions and the Queen's
prerogative, "let's have a bit of dinner, and a drop of som'at hot."
Now the drop of som'at hot signified a dose of alcohol sufficient to
send three ordinary men very drunk to bed.

While conquering the world Roger Scatcherd had not conquered his old
bad habits. Indeed, he was the same man at all points that he had
been when formerly seen about the streets of Barchester with his
stone-mason's apron tucked up round his waist. The apron he had
abandoned, but not the heavy prominent thoughtful brow, with the
wildly flashing eye beneath it. He was still the same good companion,
and still also the same hard-working hero. In this only had he
changed, that now he would work, and some said equally well, whether
he were drunk or sober. Those who were mostly inclined to make a
miracle of him--and there was a school of worshippers ready to adore
him as their idea of a divine, superhuman, miracle-moving, inspired
prophet--declared that his wondrous work was best done, his
calculations most quickly and most truly made, that he saw with most
accurate eye into the far-distant balance of profit and loss, when
he was under the influence of the rosy god. To these worshippers his
breakings-out, as his periods of intemperance were called in his own
set, were his moments of peculiar inspiration--his divine frenzies,
in which he communicated most closely with those deities