The room was distractingly neat, and as handsomely furnished as it is possible for an office to be within the closest official limits. A Spanish mahogany desk with a cylinder cover, and innumerable drawers fitted with invisible Bramah locks, occupied the centre of the room; and four ponderous Spanish mahogany chairs, with padded backs, and seats covered with crimson morocco, were primly ranged against the wall. Upon the mantelpiece ticked a skeleton clock; above which there hung the sternest and grimmest of almanacks, on either whereof were fastened divers lists and calendars of awful character, affected by gentlemen on 'Change. Before penetrating to this innermost and sacred chamber, George Sheldon wasted some little time in agreeable gossip with a gentleman whom he found yawning over the _Times_ newspaper in an outer and less richly furnished apartment. This gentleman was Philip Sheldon's clerk, the younger son of a rich Yorkshire farmer, who had come to London with the intention of making his fortune on the Stock Exchange, and whose father had paid a considerable sum in order to obtain for this young man the privilege of reading the Times in Mr. Sheldon's office, and picking up whatever knowledge might be obtained from the business transactions of his employer. The career of Philip Sheldon had been watched with some interest by his fellow-townsmen of Barlingford. They had seen him leave that town with a few hundreds in his pocket, and they had heard of him twelve years afterwards as a prosperous stockbroker, with a handsome house and a handsome carriage, and the reputation of being one of the sharpest men in the City. The accounts of him that came to Barlingford were all more or less exaggerated; and the men who discussed his cleverness and his good luck were apt to forget that he owed the beginning of his fortunes to Tom Halliday's eighteen thousand pounds. The one fact that impressed Philip Sheldon's townsmen was the fact that a Barlingford man had made money on the Stock Exchange; and the one inference they drew therefrom was the inference that other Barlingford men might do the same.