foreign exchanges, and I study them like a stockbroker. Nathan said one
day, 'It's a thousand pities he's a Peer; there's a fellow with a head
to beat the whole Stock Exchange.'"

"Does he make you pay twenty per cent, or five-and' twenty for short
dates?"

"You don't understand it at all. It's no question of that kind. It's
always a calculation of what gold is worth at Amsterdam, or some other
place, and it's a difference of, maybe, one-eighth that determines the
whole value of a bill."

"I see," said O'Shea, puffing his cigar very slowly. "I have no doubt
that you bought your knowledge on these subjects dearly enough."

"I should think I did! Until I came to understand the thing, I was
always 'outside the ropes,' always borrowing with the 'exchanges against
me,'--you know what I mean?"

"I believe I do," said O'Shea, sighing heavily. "They have been against
me all my life."

"That's just because you never took trouble to study the thing. You
rushed madly into the market whenever you wanted money, and paid
whatever they asked."

"I did indeed! and, what's more, was very grateful if I got it."

"And I know what came of that,--how that ended."

"How?"

"Why, you dipped your estate, gave mortgages, and the rest of it."

O'Shea nodded a full assent.

"Oh, _I_ know the whole story; I 've seen so much of this sort of
thing. Well, old fellow," added he, after a pause, "if I 'd been
acquainted with you ten or fifteen years ago, I could have saved you
from all this ruin."

O'Shea repressed every tendency to a smile, and nodded again.

"I 'd have said to you, 'Don't be in a hurry, watch the market, and
I 'll tell you when to "go in."'"

"Maybe it's not too late yet, so give me a word of friendly advice,"
said O'Shea, with a modest humility. "There are few men want it more."

There was now a pause of several minutes; O'Shea waiting to see how his
bait had taken, and Agincourt revolving in his mind whether this was not
the precise moment for opening his negotiation. At last he said,--

"I wrote that letter I promised you. I said you were an out-and-outer as
to ability, and that they could n't do better than make you a Governor
somewhere, though you 'd not be disgusted with something smaller. I 've
been looking over the vacancies; there's not much open. Could you be a
Mahogany Commissioner at Honduras?"

"Well, so far as having had my legs under that wood for many years with
pleasure to myself and satisfactio