ng
its car and human contents miserably into the Thames mud. Why
detail the pitiable post-mortem examination resulting? Lancelot
sickened over it for many a long day; not, indeed, mourning at his
private losses, but at the thorough hollowness of the system which
it exposed, about which he spoke his mind pretty freely to his
uncle, who bore it good-humouredly enough. Indeed, the discussions
to which it gave rise rather comforted the good man, by turning his
thought from his own losses to general principles. 'I have ruined
you, my poor boy,' he used to say; 'so you may as well take your
money's worth out of me in bullying.' Nothing, indeed, could
surpass his honest and manly sorrow for having been the cause of
Lancelot's beggary; but as for persuading him that his system was
wrong, it was quite impossible. Not that Lancelot was hard upon
him; on the contrary, he assured him, repeatedly, of his conviction,
that the precepts of the Bible had nothing to do with the laws of
commerce; that though the Jews were forbidden to take interest of
Jews, Christians had a perfect right to be as hard as they liked on
'brother' Christians; that there could not be the least harm in
share-jobbing, for though it did, to be sure, add nothing to the
wealth of the community--only conjure money out of your neighbour's
pocket into your own--yet was not that all fair in trade? If a man
did not know the real value of the shares he sold you, you were not
bound to tell him. Again, Lancelot quite agreed with his uncle,
that though covetousness might be idolatry, yet money-making could
not be called covetousness; and that, on the whole, though making
haste to be rich was denounced as a dangerous and ruinous temptation
in St. Paul's times, that was not the slightest reason why it should
be so now. All these concessions were made with a freedom which
caused the good banker to suspect at times that his shrewd nephew
was laughing at him in his sleeve, but he could not but subscribe to
them for the sake of consistency; though as a staunch Protestant, it
puzzled him a little at times to find it necessary to justify
himself by getting his 'infidel' nephew to explain away so much of
the Bible for him. But men are accustomed to do that now-a-days,
and so was he.

Once only did Lancelot break out with his real sentiments when the
banker was planning how to re-establish his credit; to set to work,
in fact, to blow