lar silence. This boded ill
for the existence of the L750 I had so idiotically invested, the
recuperation whereof, in whole or in part, became the subject of my
nightly meditations; and, as correspondence in such matters is usually
unsatisfactory, I determined to start personally in search of my
suspended deposit.

I did not know a single individual of the Slopperton Provisional
Committee, but I was well enough acquainted with Cutts, whose present
residence was in a midland county of England, where the work of railway
construction was going actively forward. As I drove into the town where
the Saxon had established his headquarters, I saw with feelings of
peculiar disgust immense gangs of cut-throat looking fellows--"the
navies of the nations," as Alfred Tennyson calls them--busy at their
embankments, absorbing capital at an alarming ratio, and utterly
indifferent to the state of the unfortunate shareholders then writhing
under the pressure of calls. Philanthropy is a very easy thing when our
own circumstances are prosperous, but a turn of the wheel of fortune
gives a different complexion to our views. If I had been called upon two
months earlier to pronounce an oration upon the vast benefits of general
employment and high wages, I should have launched out _con amore_. Now,
the spectacle which I beheld suggested no other idea than that of an
enormous cheese fast hastening to decomposition and decay beneath the
nibbling of myriads of mites.

I found Cutts in his apartment of the hotel in the unmolested enjoyment
of a cigar. He seemed fatter, and a little more red in the gills than
when I saw him last, otherwise there was no perceptible difference.

"Hallo, old fellow!" cried the Saxon, pitching away a pile of estimates;
"what the mischief has brought you up here? Waiter--a bottle of sherry!
You wouldn't prefer something hot at this hour of the morning, would
you?"

"Certainly not."

"Ay--you're a married man now. How's old Morgan? Lord! what fun we had
at Shrewsbury when I helped you to your wife!"

"So far as I recollect, Mr Cutts, you nearly finished that business. But
I want to have a serious talk with you about other matters. What has
become of that confounded Slopperton Valley, for which you were
engineer?"

"Slopperton Valley! Haven't you heard about it? The whole concern was
wound up about three weeks ago. Take a glass of wine."

"Wound up? Why, this is most extraordinary. I never received any
circular!"