rd quite close, as he came into the very chamber adjoining
that where Dan was.

"Come this way, come this way, I say," cried the old man, in a voice
tremulous with passion. "If you want to seize, you shall see the
chattels at once,--no need to trouble yourself about an inventory! There
is my bed; I got fresh straw into the sacking on Saturday. The blanket
is a borrowed one; that horseman's cloak is my own. There 's not much
in that portmanteau," cried he, kicking it with his foot against the
wall. "Two ragged shirts and a lambskin waistcoat, and the title-deeds
of estates that not even your chicanery could get back for me. Take them
all, take that old blunderbuss, and tell the Grinder that if I 'd have
put it to my head twenty years ago, it would have been mercy, compared
to the slow torture of his persecution!"

"My dear Mr. Curtis, my dear sir," interposed a bland, soft voice that
Dan at once recognized as belonging to Mr. Crowther, the attorney, "you
must allow me once more to protest against this misunderstanding. There
is nothing farther from my thoughts at this moment than any measure of
rigor or severity towards you."

"What do you mean, then, by that long catalogue of my debts? Why have
you hunted me out to show me bills I can never pay, and bonds I can
never release?"

"Pray be calm, sir; bear with me patiently, and you will see that my
business here this morning is the very reverse of what you suspect it
to be. It is perfectly true that Mr. Fagan possesses large, very large,
claims upon you."

"How incurred, sir?--answer me that. Who can stand forty, fifty, ay,
sixty per cent? Has he not succeeded to every acre of my estate? Have I
anything, except that settle-bed, that is n't his?"

"You cannot expect me to go at length into these matters, sir," said
Crowther, mildly; "they are now bygones, and it is of the future I wish
to speak."

"If the past be bad, the future promises to be worse," cried Curtis,
bitterly. "It is but sorry mercy to ask me to look forward!"

"I think I can convince you to the contrary, sir, if you vouchsafe me a
hearing. I hope to show you that there are in all probability many happy
years before you,--years of ease and affluence. Yes, sir, in spite of
that gesture of incredulity, I repeat it,--of ease and affluence."

"So, then, they think to buy me at last," broke in the old man. "The
scoundrels must have met with few honest men, or they had never dared
to make such a proposal