Official Assignee, Mr Wilks!” That it should have come to this! Ruin, ruin, ruin. Ruin and disgrace to us all, the duped directors of this wretched swindle. Were we not responsible for the debts of the undertaking? Was not the paid-up capital in the treacherous hands of our Yankee cashier, Dr Titus A. C. Bett, and could there be a doubt that it was lost for ever? Plainly the whole business was a fraudulent trick from the first—a net to catch gold-fish! Ah! already with my mind’s eye I saw the broker’s men in possession of Magnolia Villa; I saw my costly furniture, the cellar of wines I had been so proud of, carriages, pictures, everything, submitted to public competition by a smirking auctioneer. I heard the hammer fall, knocking down my Lares and Penates to the highest bidder. Going, going, gone! the accursed formula rang in my ears with baleful clearness. Magnolia Cottage to let! My family hiding in poor lodgings in Boulogne! George Bulkeley, a moody bankrupt, slinking about the pier of that refuge for insolvency, and afraid to face the Stock Exchange! Even though the Court might declare me blameless, even though the commissioner might whitewash me into commercial purity, my conscience was less complaisant, and sternly refused me even a third-class certificate. I might have had the right to ruin myself and family, but what right had I to make desolate the hearths of many helpless and confiding people? How about those shareholders ignorant of business, those pinched vicars, needy widows, poor old half-pay officers, and the rest, who had been dazzled by our prospectus, and had invested their savings in the pocket of Dr Titus A. C. Bett? It was my respectable name, in common with those of my fellows in the Direction, which had baited the hook for such poor prey as these. My heart—even City men have hearts sometimes—was heavy and mournful with a grief not wholly selfish. Plump! fluff! down went the mustang on his knees, his feet having plunged into the holes that led to the dwellings of some “prairie-dogs”—interesting little brutes that burrow all over the plains—and over the animal’s head I flew with the force of a sky-rocket. Lighting with a great thump on the hard turf, I ran no trifling risk of a broken neck; but my hat saved me, at the expense of its own demolition, and I was only stunned. But when Ichabod hurried to the rescue he found me bruised and faint, and with a sprained thumb that caused me exquisite pain for the time. So stupified was I by the shock, that I did not hear the beat of hoofs upon the green carpet of the prairie, nor the sound of friendly voices, and was surprised, on looking up, to see that I was surrounded by a large party of equestrians, who were surveying me from the saddle with every appearance of interest. Riding-habits and side-saddles here in prairie-land! hats and feathers, too, of most ladylike elegance, and a pair of pretty, rather pale faces under the shadow of those plumed felts. Besides the