‘You’ve got ’em, Ernest, my boy, hard and fast. I believe you might make a pound a head, say four thousand pounds out of it, in a month. Sticker is a good man, according to his light, and Pug’s a sharp fellow. But they don’t see, and won’t see, the signs of the times. They’re always remembering the old boiling-down days, and they fancy that the least change in markets will send us back to it. You did right to get the offer in writing, and for a deferred time. We’ll keep it a day or two, and then you shall go and accept the terms like a man.’ ‘But how about the money?’ inquired Mr. Neuchamp with a shade of natural anxiety. ‘Twenty thousand pounds are no nutshells, however little it may sound in these extravagant days.’ ‘Look here,’ said Paul, ‘find this ten thousand down; any agent will give you five thousand on the security of your year’s draft of fat stock from the two runs; it will come to more, I daresay, but we must be as careful as we can. I think that you will have to give a mortgage over Rainbar and Mildool—a second one—and then you may draw a cheque for the ten thousand as soon as you like.’ ‘And what about the “approved” bills?‘ ‘Well, the day after to-morrow you can go to old Sticker and pay him the half cash. I’ll put the cash part of it through; ask him to make out the bills, with interest added at 8 per cent; bring them to me, and I will put a name on the back which will render them legal tender, whatever may come of them after.’ ‘The old story since I came to Australia,’ said Ernest. ‘It seems that I can do nothing without your advice; and that your help follows me as a natural consequence—whatever I do, and whatever I buy.’ ‘Well, if this shot turns out badly,’ said Paul, ‘I’ll promise not to _back your bills any more_. Will that satisfy you? But Levison seems quite determined, “just this once,” as the children say, and I generally take his tip if I see a chance. I think our money is on the right horse.‘ ‘I hope so,’ said Ernest, thinking, respectfully, of the lovely condition of Rainbar at the moment, and fearing lest, by any financial legerdemain, it might be taken away from him in time to come.