nce of Dunn, the Unimpeachable, but I put
one eye a little aslant, this way, and I just said, 'Round the corner,
old fellow,--round the corner!' Oh, didn't he look what the Yankees call
'mean ugly'!"

"He 'll never forget it to you, that's certain."

"If he did, I 'd try and brush up his memory a bit," said Davis, curtly.
"He must be a rare sharp one," added he, after a pause.

"The cleverest man in England, I don't care who the other is," cried
Hankes, with enthusiasm. "When the crash comes,--it will be in less than
a month from this day,--the world will discover that they're done to the
tune of between three and four millions sterling, and I defy the
best accountant that ever stepped to trace out where the frauds
originated,--whether it was the Railways smashed the Mines, the Mines
that ruined the Great Ossory, the Great Ossory that dipped the Drainage,
or the Drainage that swamped the Glengariff, not to speak of all the
incidental confusion about estates never paid for, and sums advanced
on mock mortgage, together, with cancelled scrip reissued, preference
shares circulated before the current ones, and dock warrants for goods
that never existed. And that ain't all" continued Hankes, to whom
the attentive eagerness of Grog's manner vouched for the interest
his narrative excited,--"that ain't all; but there isn't a class nor
condition in life, from the peer to the poorest laboring-man, that he
has n't in some way involved in his rogueries, and made him almost
a partner in the success. Each speculation being dependent for its
solvency on the ruin of some other, Ossory will hate Glengariff,
Drainage detest Mines, Railways curse Patent Fuel, and so on. I 'll give
the Equity Court and the Bankrupt Commissioners fifty years and they'll
not wind up the concern."

Grog rubbed his hands gleefully, and laughed aloud.

"Then all the people that will be compromised!" said Hankes; "Glumthal
himself is not too clean-handed; lords and fine ladies that lent their
names to this or that company, chairmen of committees in the House that
did n't disdain to accept five hundred or a thousand shares as a mark of
grateful recognition for pushing a bill through its second reading;
ay, and great mercantile houses that discounted freely on forged
acceptances, owning that they thought the best of all security was the
sight of a convict-hulk and a felon's jacket, and that no man was
such prompt pay as he that took a loan of a friend's signat