n my humbler walk of life I know just how to
utilise you. I lead you on, where you think you are going to gain some
advantage over others; and by dexterously playing upon your love of
a good bargain, your innate desire to best somebody else--I succeed
in besting you. There, sir, you have the philosophy of our mutual
relations."

He bowed and raised his cap. Charles looked at him and cowered. Yes,
genius as he is, he positively cowered. "And do you mean to say,"
he burst out, "you intend to go on so bleeding me?"

The Colonel smiled a bland smile. "Sir Charles Vandrift," he
answered, "I called you just now the goose that lays the golden
eggs. You may have thought the metaphor a rude one. But you _are_
a goose, you know, in certain relations. Smartest man on the Stock
Exchange, I readily admit; easiest fool to bamboozle in the
open country that ever I met with. You fail in one thing--the
perspicacity of simplicity. For that reason, among others, I have
chosen to fasten upon you. Regard me, my dear sir, as a microbe of
millionaires, a parasite upon capitalists. You know the old rhyme:

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And these again have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum!

Well, that's just how I view myself. _You_ are a capitalist and a
millionaire. In _your_ large way you prey upon society. YOU deal in
Corners, Options, Concessions, Syndicates. You drain the world
dry of its blood and its money. You possess, like the mosquito, a
beautiful instrument of suction--Founders' Shares--with which you
absorb the surplus wealth of the community. In _my_ smaller way,
again, _I_ relieve you in turn of a portion of the plunder. I am a
Robin Hood of my age; and, looking upon _you_ as an exceptionally bad
form of millionaire--as well as an exceptionally easy form of pigeon
for a man of my type and talents to pluck--I have, so to speak,
taken up my abode upon you."

Charles looked at him and groaned.

The young man continued, in a tone of gentle badinage. "I love the
plot-interest of the game," he said, "and so does dear Jessie here.
We both of us adore it. As long as I find such good pickings upon
you, I certainly am not going to turn away from so valuable a
carcass, in order to batten myself, at considerable trouble, upon
minor capitalists, out of whom it is difficult to extract a few
hundreds. It may have puzzled you to guess why I fix upon you so
persistently. Now you know, and understand. Wh