nd forced to enlist in cavalry
regiments, eagerly joined, and in a very small way the coining was
begun, but they were terribly crippled by the cost of each piece. James
Clareborough was for producing something cheap, saying that it was
absurd to be making imitation sovereigns the material for each of which
cost ten shillings; but his uncle's theory was that only by the great
perfection of the coins could success and immunity from discovery be
assured.

The uncle had the support of the two younger men, and after a while the
skill begotten from practice enabled them to produce the coins more
rapidly; improved machinery was obtained from Belgium; four more
impecunious members of the family were sworn in to join in the secret of
what they called their private bank; and at the end of three years the
mansion in Highcombe Street was taken, fitted up by foreign workmen, and
by degrees the machinery brought in through the book-collector's house,
and all done without a suspicion being raised.

The generally-accepted idea in fashionable sporting circles was that the
wealth of the Clareboroughs came from their clever gambling
transactions, and many a speculator was ruined by trying to imitate
them, notably their two servants.

The various difficulties in the Clareboroughs' way dissolved upon being
attacked; wealth rolled in as fast as they liked to make it, working
hard under the guidance of their uncle, the professor, who kept the
position of captain over them, for in spite of James Clareborough's
overbearing ways, he gave up, as did the others, feeling that everything
depended upon their being united. The old man's occupancy of the
adjoining house, where he made his genuine love for collecting old works
act as a blind for the receiving of heavy cases of metal, served them
well, and the servants never once had a suspicion that there was a
communication between the two buildings, or that the stern old
housekeeper was the professor's wife.

Her part was well played, too. She never left the town mansion when all
the servants went down to The Towers. And it was at these times that
the young men came up frequently, ostensibly to visit Paris or attend
meetings, but really to work hard in the well-fitted vaults to replenish
the strong-room, whose contents they wasted fast.

Self-interest, as well as clannishness, held the family together. Use
had made the labour of production familiar, and they might have gone on
for years in