I did not know a single individual of the Slopperton Provisional Committee, but I was well enough acquainted with Cutts, whose present residence was in a midland county of England, where the work of railway construction was going actively forward. As I drove into the town where the Saxon had established his headquarters, I saw with feelings of peculiar disgust immense gangs of cut-throat looking fellows--"the navies of the nations," as Alfred Tennyson calls them--busy at their embankments, absorbing capital at an alarming ratio, and utterly indifferent to the state of the unfortunate shareholders then writhing under the pressure of calls. Philanthropy is a very easy thing when our own circumstances are prosperous, but a turn of the wheel of fortune gives a different complexion to our views. If I had been called upon two months earlier to pronounce an oration upon the vast benefits of general employment and high wages, I should have launched out _con amore_. Now, the spectacle which I beheld suggested no other idea than that of an enormous cheese fast hastening to decomposition and decay beneath the nibbling of myriads of mites. I found Cutts in his apartment of the hotel in the unmolested enjoyment of a cigar. He seemed fatter, and a little more red in the gills than when I saw him last, otherwise there was no perceptible difference. "Hallo, old fellow!" cried the Saxon, pitching away a pile of estimates; "what the mischief has brought you up here? Waiter--a bottle of sherry! You wouldn't prefer something hot at this hour of the morning, would you?" "Certainly not." "Ay--you're a married man now. How's old Morgan? Lord! what fun we had at Shrewsbury when I helped you to your wife!" "So far as I recollect, Mr Cutts, you nearly finished that business. But I want to have a serious talk with you about other matters. What has become of that confounded Slopperton Valley, for which you were engineer?" "Slopperton Valley! Haven't you heard about it? The whole concern was wound up about three weeks ago. Take a glass of wine." "Wound up? Why, this is most extraordinary. I never received any circular!" "I thought as much," said Cutts very coolly. "That's precisely what I said to old Hasherton, the chairman, the day after the secretary bolted. I told him he should send round notice to the fellows at a distance, warning them not to cash up; but it seems that the list of subscribers had gone amissing, and so the thing was left to rectify itself." "Bolted! You don't mean Mr Glanders, of the respectable firm of Glanders and Co?" "Of course I do. I wonder you have not heard of it. That comes of living in a confounded country where there are neither breeches nor newspapers--help yourself--and no direct railway communication. Glanders bolted as a matter of course, and I can tell you that I thought myself very lucky in getting hold of as much of the deposits as cleared my preliminary expenses." "Cutts--are you serious?"