lked loud."

"Well, I haven't so much talked as raved," Mr. Bender conceded--"for I'm
afraid that when I do want a thing I rave till I get it. You heard me
at Ded-borough, and your enterprising daily press has at last caught the
echo."

"Then they'll make up for lost time! But have you done it," Hugh asked,
"to prepare an alibi?"

"An alibi?"

"By 'raving,' as you say, the saddle on the wrong horse. I don't think
you at all believe you'll get the Sir Joshua--but meanwhile we shall
have cleared up the question of the Moretto."

Mr. Bender, imperturbable, didn't speak till he had done justice to this
picture of his subtlety. "Then, why on earth do you want to boom the
Moretto?"

"You ask that," said Hugh, "because it's the boomed thing that's most in
peril."

"Well, it's the big, the bigger, the biggest things, and if you drag
their value to the light why shouldn't we want to grab them and carry
them off--the same as all of _you_ originally did?"

"Ah, not quite the same," Hugh smiled--"that I _will_ say for you!"

"Yes, you stick it on now--you _have_ got an eye for the rise in values.
But I grant you your unearned increment, and you ought to be mighty glad
that, to such a time, I'll pay it you."

Our young man kept, during a moment's thought, his eyes on his
companion, and then resumed with all intensity and candour: "You may
easily, Mr. Bender, be too much for me--as you appear too much for far
greater people. But may I ask you, very earnestly, for your word on
_this_, as to any case in which that happens--that when precious things,
things we are to lose here, _are_ knocked down to you, you'll let us at
least take leave of them, let us have a sight of them in London, before
they're borne off?"

Mr. Bender's big face fell almost with a crash. "Hand them over, you
mean, to the sandwich men on Bond Street?"

"To one or other of the placard and poster men--I don't insist on the
inserted human slice! Let the great values, as a compensation to us, be
on view for three or four weeks."

"You ask me," Mr. Bender returned, "for a _general_ assurance to that
effect?"

"Well, a particular one--so it be particular enough," Hugh said--"will
do just for now. Let me put in my plea for the issue--well, of the value
that's actually in the scales."

"The Mantovano-Moretto?"

"The Moretto-Mantovano!"

Mr. Bender carnivorously smiled. "Hadn't we better know which it is
first?"

Hugh had a motion of practical indif