tter was not settled. Now, no doubt,
serious trouble was about to commence.

The visitor was a little man with grey hair and a white cravat, some
sixty years of age, dressed in black, with a very decent hat,--which,
on entering the room, he at once put down on the nearest chair,--with
reference to whom, any judge on the subject would have concurred at
first sight in the decision pronounced by Mrs. Bunce, though none
but a judge very well used to sift the causes of his own conclusions
could have given the reasons for that early decision. "He ain't a
gentleman," Mrs. Bunce had said. And the man certainly was not a
gentleman. The old man in the white cravat was very neatly dressed,
and carried himself without any of that humility which betrays one
class of uncertified aspirants to gentility, or of that assumed
arrogance which is at once fatal to another class. But, nevertheless,
Mrs. Bunce had seen at a glance that he was not a gentleman,--had
seen, moreover, that such a man could have come only upon one
mission. She was right there too. This visitor had come about money.

"About this bill, Mr. Finn," said the visitor, proceeding to take
out of his breast coat-pocket a rather large leathern case, as he
advanced up towards the fire. "My name is Clarkson, Mr. Finn. If I
may venture so far, I'll take a chair."

"Certainly, Mr. Clarkson," said Phineas, getting up and pointing to
a seat.

"Thankye, Mr. Finn, thankye. We shall be more comfortable doing
business sitting, shan't we?" Whereupon the horrid little man drew
himself close in to the fire, and spreading out his leathern case
upon his knees, began to turn over one suspicious bit of paper after
another, as though he were uncertain in what part of his portfolio
lay this identical bit which he was seeking. He seemed to be quite
at home, and to feel that there was no ground whatever for hurry
in such comfortable quarters. Phineas hated him at once,--with a
hatred altogether unconnected with the difficulty which his friend
Fitzgibbon had brought upon him.

"Here it is," said Mr. Clarkson at last. "Oh, dear me, dear me! the
third of November, and here we are in March! I didn't think it was
so bad as this;--I didn't indeed. This is very bad,--very bad! And
for Parliament gents, too, who should be more punctual than anybody,
because of the privilege. Shouldn't they now, Mr. Finn?"

"All men should be punctual, I suppose," said Phineas.

"Of course they should; of course