Leonard's.

"Serpent's tooth!" he said falteringly, "so it is you, whom I warmed at
my hearth, who are to ruin Richard Avenel?"

"No; but to save him! Come into the City and look at my model. If you
like it, the patent shall be yours!"

"Cab, cab, cab," cried Dick Avenel, stopping a 'Ransom;' "jump in,
Leonard,--jump in. I'll buy your patent,--that is, if it be worth a
straw; and as for payment--"

"Payment! Don't talk of that!"

"Well, I won't," said Dick, mildly; "for 't is not the topic of
conversation I should choose myself, just at present. And as for that
black-whiskered alligator, the baron, let me first get out of those
rambustious, unchristian, filbert-shaped claws of his, and then--but
jump in! jump in! and tell the man where to drive!"

A very brief inspection of Leonard's invention sufficed to show Richard
Avenel how invaluable it would be to him. Armed with a patent, of which
the certain effects in the increase of power and diminution of labour
were obvious to any practical man, Avenel felt that he should have no
difficulty in obtaining such advances of money as he required, whether
to alter his engines, meet the bills discounted by Levy, or carry on
the war with the monster capitalist. It might be necessary to admit into
partnership some other monster capitalist--What then? Any partner better
than Levy. A bright idea struck him.

"If I can just terrify and whop that infernal intruder on my own
ground for a few months, he may offer, himself, to enter into
partnership,--make the two concerns a joint-stock friendly combination,
and then we shall flog the world."

His gratitude to Leonard became so lively that Dick offered to bring his
nephew in for Lansmere instead of himself; and when Leonard declined the
offer, exclaimed, "Well, then, any friend of yours; I'm all for reform
against those high and mighty right honourable borough-mongers; and what
with loans and mortgages on the small householders, and a long course
of 'Free and Easies' with the independent freemen, I carry one--seat
certain, perhaps both seats of the town of Lansmere, in my breeches
pocket." Dick then, appointing an interview with Leonard at his
lawyer's, to settle the transfer of the invention, upon terms which he
declared "should be honourable to both parties," hurried off, to search
amongst his friends in the City for some monster capitalist, who alight
be induced to extricate him from the jaws of Levy and the engines of his
riv