l."

"Bother him. Yes, and but for you, Richards, never an account should
_he_ have had with _us_."

"Well, Jack gets round me somehow. He is not half a bad lad, with his
dash and his fun and his jollity. Ay, and his ways are very winning
sometimes. He does get round one, partner."

"I don't doubt it, Richards. Winning enough when he wants to get round
you and wheedle cash out of you. I tell you what, partner: Jack's got
all his father's aristocratic notions, all his father's pride and
improvidence. Ay, and he'd ruin his dad too, if--if--"

"If what, partner?"

"Why, if his dad weren't ruined already."

"Come, come, Keane, it isn't quite so bad as that."

"Pretty nigh it, I can assure you. And I can't get the proud old Scot
to retrench. Why doesn't he let that baronial hall of his, instead of
sticking to it and mortgaging it in order to keep up appearances and
entertain half the gentry in the county? Why doesn't he take a
five-roomed cottage, and let his daughter teach the harp that she
plays so well?"

"O partner! Come, you know!"

"Well, 'O partner' as much as you like; if old Mackenzie's pride were
proper pride, his daughter would take in washing sooner than the family
should go deeper in debt every day. But the crisis will come; somebody
will foreclose."

"You won't surely, partner?"

"Bother your sentiment, Richards. He owes me over forty thousand pounds.
Think of that. I declare I believe I'd be a better landlord than Mack
himself. Forty thousand pounds, Richards, and I don't see any way of
getting a penny, except by--"

"Except by foreclosing?"

Richards sighed as he bent once more over his desk. He had been family
lawyer to Mackenzie before he joined the firm of Griffin, Keane, and
Co., and dearly loved the family, or what was left of it.

He tried to work but couldn't now. Presently he closed the ledger with a
bang and got down off his stool.

"I say, Keane." he said, "I see a way out of this. Look here. You have
nobody to leave your wealth to except dear little Gerty--"

"Well?"

"Well, Jack is precious fond of her; why not--"

"He, he, he! ho, ho, ho!" laughed Keane. "Why, Richards, you're in your
dotage, man! I've a _baronet_ in view for Gerty. And Jack is a _beggar_,
although he does swing a sword at his side and fight the French."

Richards went back to his stool quiet and subdued. "Poor Jack!" he
muttered.

* * * * *

"Just two years this very da