and mother are out of the way in Australia. You came to me
about that business, perhaps? Oh, on such a joyful day as this I
forgive everybody. Tell Joe I do not want to see him, but I have
forgiven him."

"Oh, he's mad!" growled James; "he's gone stark staring mad!"

"You don't seem quite yourself this morning, Mr. Emblem," said Mr.
Chalker. "Perhaps this gentleman, your friend from India, will advise
you when I am gone. You don't understand, Mister," he addressed Lala
Roy, "the nature of a bill. Once you start a bill, and begin to renew
it, it's like planting a tree, for it grows and grows of its own
accord, and by Act of Parliament, too, though they do try to hack and
cut it down in the most cruel way. You see Mr. Emblem is obstinate.
He's got to pay off that bill, which is a Bill of Sale, and he won't
do it. Make him write the check and have done with it."

"This is the best day's work I ever did," Mr. Emblem went on.
"To remember the letter, word for word, and everything!
Mr. Arbuthnot has, very likely, finished the whole business
by now. Thousands--thousands--and all for Iris!"

"Look here, Mr. Emblem," said the lawyer angrily. "You'll not only be
a bankrupt if you go on like this, but you'll be a fraudulent bankrupt
as well. Is it honest, I want to know, to refuse to pay your just
debts when you've put by thousands, as you boast--you actually
boast--for your granddaughter?"

"Yes," said the old man, "Iris will have thousands."

"I think, sir," said Lala Roy, "that you are under an illusion. Mr.
Emblem does not possess any such savings or investments as you
imagine."

"Then why does he go on talking about thousands?"

"He has had a shock; he cannot quite understand what has happened. You
had better leave him for the present."

"Leave him! And nothing but these moldy old books! Here, you sir--you
James--you shopman--come here! What is the stock worth?"

"It depends upon whether you are buying or selling," said James. "If
you were to sell it under the hammer, in lots, it wouldn't fetch a
hundred pounds."

"There, you hear--you hear, all of you! Not a hundred pounds, and my
Bill of Sale is three-fifty."

"Pray, sir," said Lala Roy, "who told you that Mr. Emblem was so
wealthy?"

"His grandson."

"Then, sir perhaps it would be well to question the grandson further,
he may know things of which we have heard nothing."

The Act of 1882, which came into operation in the following January,
is cruel ind