greener and more healthy-looking mates. "A
creaking door," the proverb has it, "hangs long upon its hinges;" and
many a wheezing, parchment-looking gentleman, as we all know, who
ought to have died every year of his life since he was born, draws his
difficult breath through threescore years and ten; whilst the young,
the hardy, and the sound are smitten in their pride, and fall in heaps
about him. It is no less strange that a house of business like that of
our friend Mr Allcraft, should assert its existence for years, rotten
as it was, during the whole of the time, at its very heart's core. And
yet such is the case. Eight years elapsed, and found it still in the
land of the living: yes, and to the eye external, as proper and as
good a house of business as any you shall name. Its vitals were
going--were gone, before the smallest indications of mischief appeared
upon the surface. Life must have been well nourished to maintain
itself so long. And was it not? Answer, thou kind physician, gentle
Margaret! Answer, thou balm and life's elixir--Margaret's _gold_!

Eight weary years have passed, and we have reached a miserable day in
the month of November. The wind is howling, and the rain is pelting
against the parlour windows of the Banking-house, whose blinds are
drawn close down. The partners are all assembled. Michael, whose hair
is as grey as his father's on the day of his death, and whom care and
misery have made haggard and old, sits at a table, with a heap of
papers before him, and a pen in his hand--engaged, as it appears, in
casting up accounts. Mr Bellamy, who looks remarkably well--very
glossy and very fat--sits at the table likewise, perusing leisurely
the county newspapers through golden eyeglasses. He holds them with
the air of a gentleman, comfortable and at ease in all respects,
mentally and bodily. Augustus Theodore swings on a chair before the
fire, which he keeps at work for his own especial consolation. His
feet stretch along the fender--his amusement is the poker. He has
grown insufferably vain, is dressed many degrees above the highest
fashionable point, and looks a dissipated, hopeless blackguard.
Planner, very subdued, very pale, and therefore very unlike himself,
stands behind the chair of Allcraft; and ever and anon he casts a
rueful glance over the shoulder of his friend, upon the papers which
his friend is busy with. No one speaks. At intervals Mr Bellamy coughs
extensively and loudly, just to show