which stopped at only four
places--Rugby, Ullerton, Murford, and Manchester.

"I daresay he has gone to Manchester," thought Mr. Sheldon--"on some
racing business most likely, which he wants to keep dark from his
patron the Captain. What a fool I am to trouble myself about him, as if
he couldn't stir without meaning mischief to me! But I don't understand
the friendship between him and George. My brother George is not likely
to take up any man without some motive."

After these reflections Mr. Sheldon left the station and went back to
his office in another hansom, still extremely thoughtful and somewhat
disquieted.

"What does it matter to me where they go or what they do?" he asked
himself, impatient of some lurking weakness of his own; "what does it
matter to me whether those two are friendly or unfriendly? They can do
me no harm."

There happened to be a kind of lull in the stormy regions of the Stock
Exchange at the time of Valentine Hawkehurst's departure. Stagnation
had descended upon that commercial ocean, which is such a dismal waste
of waters for the professional speculator in its hour of calm. All the
Bulls in the zoological creation would have failed to elevate the
drooping stocks and shares and first-preference bonds and debentures,
which hung their feeble heads and declined day by day, the weaker of
them threatening to fade away and diminish to a vanishing-point, as it
seemed to some dejected holders who read the Stock-Exchange lists and
the money article in the Times with a persistent hopefulness which
struggled against the encroachments of despair. The Bears had been
busy, but were now idle--having burnt their fingers, commercial
gentlemen remarked. So Bulls and Bears alike hung listlessly about a
melancholy market, and conversed together dolefully in corners; and the
burden of all their lamentations was to the effect that there never had
been such times, and things never had been so bad, and it was a
question whether they would ever right themselves. Philip Sheldon
shared in the general depression. His face was gloomy, and his manner
for the time being lost something of its brisk, business-like
cheerfulness. The men who envied his better fortunes watched him
furtively when he showed himself amongst them, and wondered whether
Sheldon, of Jull, Girdlestone, and Sheldon, had been hit by these bad
times.

It was not entirely the pressure of that commercial stagnation which
weighed on the spirits of Ph