erefore, certain that we have struck coal?"

"My Lord, when a young man enters life from one of the universities,
with a high reputation for ability, he can go a long way,--if he only
be prudent,--living on his capital. It is the same thing in a great
industrial enterprise; you must start at speed, and with a high
pressure,--get way on you, as the sailors say,--and you will skim along
for half a mile after the steam is off."

"I come back to my former question. Have we found coal?"

"I hope so. I trust we have. Indeed, there is every reason to say we
have found coal. What we need most at this moment is a man like that
gentleman whose note is on the table,--a large capitalist, a great
City name. Let him associate himself in the project, and success is as
certain as that we stand here."

"But you have just told me he has given up his business life,--retired
from affairs altogether."

"My Lord, these men never give up. They buy estates, they can live at
Rome or Paris, and take a chateau at Cannes, and try to forget Mincing
Lane and the rest of it; but if you watch them, you 'll see it's the
money article in the 'Times' they read before the leader. They have
but one barometer for everything that happens in Europe,--how are the
exchanges? and they are just as greedy of a good thing as on any morning
they hurried down to the City in a hansom to buy in or sell out. See if
I 'm not right. Just throw out a hint, no more, that you 'd like a word
of advice from Colonel Bramleigh about your project; say it's a large
thing,--too large for an individual to cope with,--that you are yourself
the least possible of a business man, being always engaged in very
different occupations,--and ask what course he would counsel you to
take."

"I might show him these drawings,--these colored plans."

"Well, indeed, my Lord," said Cutbill, brushing his mouth with his
hand, to hide a smile of malicious drollery, "I'd say I'd not show him
the plans. The pictorial rarely appeals to men of his stamp. It's the
multiplication-table they like, and if all the world were like them one
would never throw poetry into a project."

"You 'll have to come with me, Cutbill; I see that," said his Lordship,
reflectingly.

"My Lord, I am completely at your orders."

"Yes; this is a sort of negotiation you will conduct better than
myself. I am not conversant with this sort of thing, nor the men
who deal in them. A great treaty, a question of boundary, a roy