ure. What a
knockdown blow for all that lath-and-plaster edifice we dignify by the
name of Credit, when the world sees that it is a loaf the rogue can take
a slice out of as well as the honest man!"

"Won't we have stunning leaders in the 'Times' about it!" cried Grog.
"It will go deuced hard with the Ministry that have made this fellow a
peer."

"Yes, they'll have to go out," said Hanked, gravely; "a cabinet may
defend a bad measure,--they 'll never fight for a bad man."

"And they can't hang this fellow?" said Grog, after a pause.

"Hang! I should think not, indeed."

"Nor even transport him?"

"No, not touch a hair of his head. He'll have to live abroad for a year
or two,--in Paris or Rome,--no great hardship if it were Naples; he
'll make a surrender of his property,--an old house somewhere and some
brick-fields, a mine of Daryamon coal, and a flax-mill on a river that
has scarcely any water, together with a sheaf of bad bills and Guatemala
bonds. They 'll want to examine him before the Court, and he'll send
them a sick-certificate, showing how agitation and his recent losses
have almost made him imbecile; and even Mr. Linklater will talk
feelingly about his great reverse of condition."

"It's as good as a play to hear about this," said Grog; "it beats
Newmarket all to sticks."

"If it's a play, it won't be a benefit to a good many folk," said
Hankes, grinning.

"Well, he _is_ a clever fellow,--far and away cleverer than I ever
thought him," said Grog. "Any man--I don't care who he is--can do the
world to a short extent, but to go in at them on this scale a fellow
must be a genius."

"He _is_ a genius," said Hankes, in a tone of decision. "Just think for
a moment what a head it must have been that kept all that machinery at
work for years back without a flaw or a crack to be detected, started
companies, opened banks, worked mines, railroads, and telegraphs, built
refuge harbors, drained whole counties, brought vast tracts of waste
land into cultivation, equalizing the chances of all enterprises by
making the success of this come to the aid of the failure of that: the
grand secret of the whole being the dexterous application of what is
called 'Credit.'"

"All that wouldn't do at Doncaster," said Grog; "puff your horse as much
as you like, back him up how you will in the betting-ring, if he has n't
the speed in him it won't do. It's only on 'Change you can 'brag out of
a bad hand.' Dunn would never cut