life in the afternoons and evenings. Going along a fine avenue of
trees for half a mile or so, you came to the "Golden House," the
President's official residence, an imposing villa of white stone with
a gilt statue of Aureataland, a female figure sitting on a plowshare,
and holding a sword in the right hand, and a cornucopia in the left.
By her feet lay what was apparently a badly planed cannon ball; this,
I learned, was a nugget, and from its presence and the name of the
palace, I gathered that the president had once hoped to base the
prosperity of his young republic on the solid foundation of mineral
wealth. This hope had been long abandoned.

I have always hated hotels, so I lost no time in looking round for
lodgings suitable to my means, and was fortunate enough to obtain a
couple of rooms in the house occupied by a Catholic priest, Father
Jacques Bonchretien. He was a very good fellow, and, though we did
not become intimate, I could always rely on his courtesy and friendly
services. Here I lived in great comfort at an expense of fifty dollars
a month, and I soon found that my spare fifty made me a well-to-do man
in Whittingham. Accordingly I had the _entree_ of all the best houses,
including the Golden House, and a very pleasant little society we had;
occasional dances, frequent dinners, and plenty of lawn tennis and
billiards prevented me feeling the tedium I had somewhat feared, and
the young ladies of Whittingham did their best to solace my exile. As
for business, I found the bank doing a small business, but a tolerably
satisfactory one, and, if we made some bad debts, we got high interest
on the good ones, so that, one way or another, I managed to send home
pretty satisfactory reports, and time passed on quietly enough in
spite of certain manifestations of discontent among the population.
These disturbing phenomena were first brought prominently to my notice
at the time when I became involved in the fortunes of the Aureataland
national debt, and as all my story turns on this incident, it perhaps
is a fit subject for a new chapter.

CHAPTER II.

A FINANCIAL EXPEDIENT.

When our branch was established at Whittingham there had been an
arrangement made between ourselves and the Government, by the terms of
which we were to have the Government business, and to occupy, in fact,
much that quasi-official position enjoyed by the Bank of England at
home. As a _quid pro quo_, the bank was to lend to the Republ