thought it was
merely another of my failures. But when I have actually got
all your papers into my hands, and give them up again of my
own free will, you must see that I mean it.

"I will end, as I began, seriously. My trade has not quite
crushed out of me all germs or relics of better feeling; and
when I see a millionaire behave like a man, I feel ashamed
to take advantage of that gleam of manliness.

"Yours, with a tinge of penitence, but still a rogue, CUTHBERT CLAY."

The first thing Charles did on receiving this strange communication
was to bolt downstairs and inquire for the dispatch-box. It had
just arrived by Eagle Express Company. Charles rushed up to our
rooms again, opened it feverishly, and counted his documents. When
he found them all safe, he turned to me with a hard smile. "This
letter," he said, with quivering lips, "I consider still more
insulting than all his previous ones."

But, for myself, I really thought there was a ring of truth about
it. Colonel Clay was a rogue, no doubt--a most unblushing rogue;
but even a rogue, I believe, has his better moments.

And the phrase about the "position of trust and responsibility"
touched Charles to the quick, I suppose, in re the Slump in
Cloetedorp Golcondas. Though, to be sure, it was a hit at me as
well, over the ten per cent commission.

X

THE EPISODE OF THE GAME OF POKER

"Seymour," my brother-in-law said, with a deep-drawn sigh, as we
left Lake George next day by the Rennselaer and Saratoga Railroad,
"no more Peter Porter for me, _if_ you please! I'm sick of disguises.
Now that we know Colonel Clay is here in America, they serve no
good purpose; so I may as well receive the social consideration and
proper respect to which my rank and position naturally entitle me."

"And which they secure for the most part (except from hotel clerks),
even in this republican land," I answered briskly.

For in my humble opinion, for sound copper-bottomed snobbery,
registered A1 at Lloyd's, give _me_ the free-born American citizen.

We travelled through the States, accordingly, for the next four
months, from Maine to California, and from Oregon to Florida,
under our own true names, "Confirming the churches," as Charles
facetiously put it--or in other words, looking into the management
and control of railways, syndicates, mines, and cattle-ranches. We
inquired about everything. And the result of our investigations
appeared to be, as Charles further r