time lived much alone, had fallen into the habit of speaking his thoughts
aloud; "but he's not the man to waste his time. I wonder."

With the winter Clodd's Lunatic fell ill.

Clodd bustled round to Chancery Lane.

"To tell you the truth," confessed Mr. Gladman, "we never thought he
would live so long as he has."

"There's the annuity you've got to think of," said Clodd, whom his
admirers of to-day (and they are many, for he must be a millionaire by
this time) are fond of alluding to as "that frank, outspoken Englishman."
"Wouldn't it be worth your while to try what taking him away from the
fogs might do for him?"

Old Gladman seemed inclined to consider the question, but Mrs. Gladman, a
brisk, cheerful little woman, had made up her mind.

"We've had what there is to have," said Mrs. Gladman. "He's
seventy-three. What's the sense of risking good money? Be content."

No one could say--no one ever did say--that Clodd, under the
circumstances, did not do his best. Perhaps, after all, nothing could
have helped. The little old gentleman, at Clodd's suggestion, played at
being a dormouse and lay very still. If he grew restless, thereby
bringing on his cough, Clodd, as a terrible black cat, was watching to
pounce upon him. Only by keeping very quiet and artfully pretending to
be asleep could he hope to escape the ruthless Clodd.

Doctor William Smith (ne Wilhelm Schmidt) shrugged his fat shoulders. "We
can do noding. Dese fogs of ours: id is de one ting dat enables the
foreigner to crow over us. Keep him quiet. De dormouse--id is a goot
idea."

That evening William Clodd mounted to the second floor of 16, Gough
Square, where dwelt his friend, Peter Hope, and knocked briskly at the
door.

"Come in," said a decided voice, which was not Peter Hope's.

Mr. William Clodd's ambition was, and always had been, to be the owner or
part-owner of a paper. To-day, as I have said, he owns a quarter of a
hundred, and is in negotiation, so rumour goes, for seven more. But
twenty years ago "Clodd and Co., Limited," was but in embryo. And Peter
Hope, journalist, had likewise and for many a long year cherished the
ambition to be, before he died, the owner or part-owner of a paper. Peter
Hope to-day owns nothing, except perhaps the knowledge, if such things be
permitted, that whenever and wherever his name is mentioned, kind
thoughts arise unbidden--that someone of the party will surely say: "Dear
old Peter! What a