id, "I did not certainly know that my dear boy
was on board, but I had too good reason to suspect it, for he had been
talking much of the vessel, and disappeared on the day she sailed, and
now this message from--"

He rose hastily and put on his greatcoat.

"Excuse me, my dear sir," urged Mr Black; "at such a time it may seem
selfish to press you on business affairs, but this is a matter of life
and death to me--"

"It is a matter of death to _me_," interrupted the other in a low tone,
"but I grant your request. My clerk will arrange it with you."

He left the office abruptly, with a bowed head, and Mr Black having
arranged matters to his satisfaction with the clerk, left it soon after,
with a sigh of relief. He cared no more for Mr Wilkins's grief than
did the dirty clerk for his master's troubles.

Returning to his dirty office, Mr Black then proceeded to do a stroke
of very dingy business.

That morning, through some mysterious agency, he had learned that there
were rumours of an unfavourable kind in reference to a certain bank in
the city, which, for convenience, we shall name the Blankow Bank. Now,
it so happened that Mr Black was intimately acquainted with one of the
directors of that bank, in whom, as well as in the bank itself, he had
the most implicit confidence. Mr Black happened to have a female
relative in the city named Mrs Niven--the same Mrs Niven who had been
landlady to Philosopher Jack. It was one of the root-principles of Mr
Black's business character that he should make hay while the sun shone.
He knew that Mrs Niven owned stock in the Blankow Bank; he knew that
the Bank paid its shareholders a very handsome dividend, and he was
aware that, owing to the unfavourable rumours then current, the value of
the stock would fall very considerably. That, therefore, was the time
for knowing men like Mr Black, who believed in the soundness of the
bank, to buy. Accordingly he wrote a letter to Mrs Niven, advising her
to sell her shares, and offering to transact the business for her, but
he omitted to mention that he meant to buy them up himself. He added a
postscript on the back, telling of the loss of the _Lively Poll_.

Mrs Niven was a kind-hearted woman, as the reader knows; moreover, she
was a trusting soul.

"Very kind o' Maister Black," she observed to Peggy, her
maid-of-all-work, on reading the letter. "The Blankow Bank gi'es a high
dividend, nae doot, but I'm well enough off, and hae na