experience in a branch of your profession that you
know very little of, as yet; and if the scheme should be carried out,
you, in consequence of the familiarity with the country which you will
have acquired, will stand an excellent chance of obtaining a good post
on the job. Now, what do you say, Escombe; are you willing to go? Your
pay during the survey will be a guinea a day--seven days a week--
beginning on the day you sail from England and ending on the day of your
return; first-class passage out and home; all expenses paid; twenty-five
pounds allowed for a special outfit; and everything in the shape of
surveying instruments and other necessaries, found. After your return
you will of course be retained in the office to work out the scheme, at
a salary to be agreed upon, which will to a great extent depend upon the
way in which you work upon the survey; while, in the event of the scheme
being carried out, you will, as I say, doubtless get a good post on the
engineering staff, at a salary that will certainly not be less than your
pay during the survey, and may possibly be a good deal more."

Young Escombe's heart leapt within him, for here was indeed a rosy
prospect suddenly opening out before him, a prospect which promised to
put an abrupt and permanent end to certain sordid embarrassments that of
late had been causing his poor widowed mother a vast amount of anxiety
and trouble, and sowing her beloved head with many premature white
hairs. For Harry's father had died about four months before this story
opens, leaving his affairs in a condition of such hopeless disorder that
the family lawyer had only just succeeded in disentangling them, with
the result that the widow had found herself left almost penniless, with
no apparent resource but to allow her daughter Lucy to go out into a
cold, unsympathetic world to earn her own living and face the many
perils that lurk in the path of a young, lovely, innocent, and
unprotected girl. But here was a way out of all their difficulties;
for, as Harry rapidly bethought himself, if all his expenses were to be
paid while engaged upon the survey, he could arrange for at least three
hundred pounds of his yearly salary to be paid to his mother at home,
which, with economy and what little she had already, would suffice to
enable her and Lucy to live in their present modest home, free from
actual want.

There was but one fly in his ointment, one disturbing item in the
alluring pro