sanctioned the founding of the Bank of
England, was at this very time addressing himself to the question of a
recoinage of the specie of the realm of England. He needed help, he
demanded ideas; nor was he too particular whence he obtained either the
one or the other.

John Law was in London on no such blind quest as he had himself
declared. He was here by the invitation, secret yet none the less
obligatory, of Montague, controller of the financial policy of England.
And he was to meet, here upon this fair morning, none less than my Lord
Somers, keeper of the seals; none less than Sir Isaac Newton, the
greatest mathematician of his time; none less than John Locke, the most
learned philosopher of the day. Strong company this, for a young and
unknown man, yet in the belief of Montague, himself a young man and a
gambler by instinct, not too strong for this young Scotchman who had
startled the Parliament of his own land by some of the most remarkable
theories of finance which had ever been proposed in any country or to
any government. As Law had himself arrogantly announced, he was indeed a
philosopher and a mathematician, young as he was; and these things
Montague was himself keen enough to know.

It promised, then, to be a strange and interesting council, this which
was to meet to-day at the Bank of England, to adjust the value of
England's coinage; two philosophers, one pompous trimmer, and two
gamblers; the younger and more daring of whom was now calmly threading
the streets of London on his way to a meeting which might mean much to
him.

To John Law, adventurer, mathematician, philosopher, gambler, it seemed
a natural enough thing that he should be asked to sit at the council
table with the ablest minds of the day and pass upon questions the most
important. This was not what gave him trouble. This matter of the
coinage, these questions of finance--they were easy. But how to win the
interest of the tall and gracious English girl whom he had met by chance
that other morn, who had left no way open for a further meeting; how to
gain access to the presence of that fair one--these were the questions
which to John Law seemed of greater importance, and of greater
difficulty in the answering.

The chair drew up at the somber quarters where the meeting had been set.
Law knew the place by instinct, even without seeing the double row of
heavy-visaged London constabulary which guarded the entrance. Here and
there along the str