nd
yon, and nothing harms a man's reputation more in the City."

"Oh, to hell with the City!" cried Thorpe, joyously. "I'm never going to
set foot in it again. Think of that! I mean it!"

None the less, he abandoned the idea of sending out for wine, and
contented himself with the resources of the cabinet instead. After some
friendly pressure, Semple consented to join him in a brandy-and-soda,
though he continued to protest between sips that at such an hour it was
an indecent practice.

"It's the ruin of many a strong man," he moralized, looking rather
pointedly at Thorpe over his glass. "It's the principal danger that
besets the verra successful man. He's too busily occupied to take
exercise, and he's too anxious and worried to get his proper sleep--but
he can always drink! In one sense, I'm not sorry to think that you're
leaving the City."

"Oh, it never hurts me," Thorpe said, indifferently accepting the
direction of the homily. "I'm as strong as an ox. But all the same, I
shall be better in every way for getting out of this hole. Thank God, I
can get off to Scotland tomorrow. But I say, Semple, what's the matter
with your visiting me at my place there? I'll give you the greatest
shooting and fishing you ever heard of."

The Broker was thinking of something else. "What is to be the precise
position of the Company, in the immediate future?" he asked.

"Company? What Company?"

Semple smiled grimly. "Have you already forgotten that there is such a
thing?" he queried, with irony. "Why, man, this Company that paid for
this verra fine Board-table," he explained, with his knuckles on its red
baize centre.

Thorpe laughed amusedly. "I paid for that out of my own pocket," he
said. "For that matter everything about the Company has come out of my
pocket----"

"Or gone into it," suggested the other, and they chuckled together.

"But no--you're right," Thorpe declared. "Some thing ought to be settled
about the Company, I suppose. Of course I wash my hands of it--but would
anybody else want to go on with it? You see its annual working expenses,
merely for the office and the Board, foot up nearly 3,000 pounds. I've
paid these for this year, but naturally I won't do it again. And would
it be worth anybody else's while to do it? Yours, for example?"

"Have you had any explanations with the other Directors?" the Broker
asked, thoughtfully.

"Explanations--no," Thorpe told him. "But that's all right. The Marquis
has bee