“Tommy played up well,” broke in Beazley, “and he never missed a chance. There has not been any brokerage lying loose in the corn market these ten years, you bet; and what he got he did well. Do you hear that MacConnell of Chicago has given him his work to do? Tommy is steaming down the deep-water channel now, full speed. What's to be done? that's the question. We simply must celebrate.” “Well,” replied Oxley, “I suppose the creditors will be giving him a dinner at the Adelphi and that sort of thing. But there's something Hatchard would like far better than fifty dinners. He has never entered the corn exchange since his failure, and I know he never would till he could look every man in the face. What do you say to ask Barnabas Greatheart to call at his office and take him?” “Oxley, you are inspired, and ought to take to politics: it's just the thing Greatheart would like to do, and it will please the men tremendously. I bet you a new hat there will be a cheer, and I see them shaking hands with Tommy: it will touch up two or three scallawags on the raw first-rate, too, who have made half a dozen compositions in their time. But what about ourselves, Ox.?” “Aye,” said Macfarlane; “we're not common shareholders in this concern: we're founders, that's what we are.” “I was thinking before you men came in that a nice piece of silver for their dinner-table--they will come up to town now--say a bowl with some little inscription on it...” “The very thing: we'll have it this afternoon; and Ox., you draw up the screed, but for my sake, as well as Tommy's, put in something about honour, and, old fellow, let it be strong; it'll go down to his boys, and be worth a fortune to them, for it will remind them that their father was an honest man.” It is not needful to describe, because everybody in the Liverpool Corn Market knows, how Barnabas Greatheart came into the room arm in arm with Thomas Hatchard, and how every single man shook hands with Thomas because he had gone beyond the law and done a noble deed, and was a credit to the corn business; and how Tommy tried to return thanks for his health a week after at the Adelphi, and broke down utterly, but not before he had explained that he wasn't at all the good man they thought him, but that he happened to have had better friends than most men. What is not known is that on the very evening of the great day a special messenger brought over to the cottage at Heswall a parcel, which, being opened, contained a massive silver bowl, with this inscription:-- TO MRS. THOMAS HATCHARD, From Three Friends, In Admiration of her Husband's Business Integrity and Stainless Honour. July 7, 1897.