e-starn" Hemmings' family, receiving his
last instructions--the security of that suburban villa, its discouraging
gentility; the superior acidity of the Miss Hemmings; the noble names of
large contractors, of company promoters, of a peer, dragged with the
lightness of gun-carriages across the conversation; the autocracy of
Hemmings, rasped up here and there, by some domestic contradiction. It
was all so nice and safe--as if the whole thing had been fastened to an
anchor sunk beneath the pink cabbages of the drawing-room carpet!
Hemmings, seeing him off the premises, had said with secrecy: "Little
Pippin will have a good thing. We shall make his salary L----. He'll be
a great man-quite a king. Ha-ha!"

Scorrier shook the ashes from his pipe. 'Salary!' he thought, straining
his ears; 'I wouldn't take the place for five thousand pounds a year. And
yet it's a fine country,' and with ironic violence he repeated, 'a dashed
fine country!'

Ten days later, having finished his report on the new mine, he stood on
the jetty waiting to go abroad the steamer for home.

"God bless you!" said Pippin. "Tell them they needn't be afraid; and
sometimes when you're at home think of me, eh?"

Scorrier, scrambling on board, had a confused memory of tears in his
eyes, and a convulsive handshake.

II

It was eight years before the wheels of life carried Scorrier back to
that disenchanted spot, and this time not on the business of the New
Colliery Company. He went for another company with a mine some thirty
miles away. Before starting, however, he visited Hemmings. The secretary
was surrounded by pigeon-holes and finer than ever; Scorrier blinked in
the full radiance of his courtesy. A little man with eyebrows full of
questions, and a grizzled beard, was seated in an arm-chair by the fire.

"You know Mr. Booker," said Hemmings--"one of my directors. This is Mr.
Scorrier, sir--who went out for us."

These sentences were murmured in a way suggestive of their uncommon
value. The director uncrossed his legs, and bowed. Scorrier also bowed,
and Hemmings, leaning back, slowly developed the full resources of his
waistcoat.

"So you are going out again, Scorrier, for the other side? I tell Mr.
Scorrier, sir, that he is going out for the enemy. Don't find them a
mine as good as you found us, there's a good man."

The little director asked explosively: "See our last dividend? Twenty
per cent; eh, what?"

Hemmings moved