e disturbed.'

'Not see me?' said the visitor with a laugh. 'I'll engage he will.'
And then followed the statement about his old acquaintanceship with Mr.
Hornett's employer.

If there were anything to be told at all, it seemed not unlikely that
this visitor might be the recipient of the intelligence, and Mr. Hornett
lingered to find if haply he might overhear. He heard nothing that
enlightened him as to the reasons for his employer's disturbance, but
heard most that passed between the two.

Bommaney had succeeded in composing himself and in washing away the
traces of his tears. Then he had taken a stiffish dose of brandy and
water, and was something like his own man again. He received his
visitor cordially, and in his anxiety not to seem low-spirited was a
little more boisterous than common.

'I'm busy, you see,' he said, waving a hand at the papers scattered
on the desk, and keeping up the farce of prosperous merchandise to the
last, 'but I can spare _you_ a minute or two, old man. What brings you
up to town?'

'I've come here to settle,' said the visitor. He was a florid man with
crisp black hair with a hint of gray in it, and he was a countryman from
head to heel. He seemed a little disposed to flaunt his bucolics upon
the town, his hat, his necktie, his boots and gaiters, were of so
countrified a fashion, and yet he looked somehow more of a gentleman
than Bommaney.

'Yes,' he said, 'I've come to settle.' He rubbed his hands and laughed
here, not because there was anything humorous and amusing in his
thoughts, but out of sheer health and jollity of nature. Bommaney,
still distrustful of his own aspect, and afraid of being observed, sat
opposite to him with bent head and fidgeted with his papers, blindly
pretending to arrange them.

'To settle,' he said absently. Then, rousing himself with an effort, 'I
thought you hated London?'

'Ah, my boy,' said his visitor, 'when you're in the shafts with a whip
behind you, you've got to go where you are driven.'

'Yes,' said Bommaney mechanically, 'that is so. That _is_ so.'

The visitor was laughing and rubbing his hands again in perfect
happiness and self-contentment, and had no eye for Bommaney's
abstraction.

'Yes,' he said, 'it's Patty's doing. I've sold up every stick and stone,
and I've taken a house in Gower Street. Do you know, Bommaney,' he
added, with an air and voice suddenly serious and confidential, 'the
country's going to the devil. Land's sinking