htly," Laura said. He seemed
to have grown many years older, and was, indeed, quite a decrepit old
man.

"I am glad they have left Clive out of the bankruptcy," the Colonel
said to Bayham; it was almost the only time when his voice exhibited any
emotion. "It was very kind of them to leave out Clive, poor boy, and
I have thanked the lawyers in court." Those gentlemen, and the judge
himself, were very much moved at this act of gratitude. The judge made a
very feeling speech to the Colonel when he came up for his certificate.
He passed very different comments on the conduct of the Manager of the
Bank, when that person appeared for examination. He wished that the
law had power to deal with those gentlemen who had come home with large
fortunes from India, realised but a few years before the bankruptcy.
Those gentlemen had known how to take care of themselves very well; and
as for the Manager, is not his wife giving elegant balls at her elegant
house at Cheltenham at this very day?

What weighed most upon the Colonel's mind, F. B. imagined, was the
thought that he had been the means of inducing many poor friends to
embark their money in this luckless speculation. Take J. J.'s money
after he had persuaded old Ridley to place 200 pounds in Indian shares!
Good God, he and his family should rather perish than he would touch a
farthing of it! Many fierce words were uttered to him by Mrs. Mackenzie,
for instance--by her angry daughter at Musselburgh--Josey's husband, by
Mr. Smee, R.A., and two or three Indian officers, friends of his own,
who had entered into the speculation on his recommendation. These
rebukes Thomas Newcome bore with an affecting meekness, as his faithful
F. B. described to me, striving with many oaths and much loudness to
carry off bis own emotion. But what moved the Colonel most of all, was
a letter which came at this time from Honeyman in India, saying that he
was doing well--that of course he knew of his benefactor's misfortune,
and that he sent a remittance which, D. V., should be annual, in payment
of his debt to the Colonel, and his good sister at Brighton. "On receipt
of this letter," said F. B., "the old man was fairly beaten--the letter,
with the bill in it, dropped out of his hands. He clasped them together,
shaking in every limb, and his head dropped down on his breast as he
said, 'I thank my God Almighty for this!' and he sent the cheque off to
Mrs. Honeyman by the post that night, sir, every shilli