For days, Mr. Black had been dangling the speculative coral and bells before Squire Dudley’s eyes, amusing and interesting that grown-up child thereby. For days, the man who knew London off by heart, every turn in its dirty streets, every trick and move the dwellers in that great Babylon were up to, had been leading on towards the point he desired to reach, viz., that of enlisting Arthur in his company, of bribing him with his delusive shilling to serve the great King Mammon for ever and for aye! To do Mr. Black justice, however, he had not the slightest idea of ruining his kinsman. That blood is thicker than water, even though the blood be only consanguineous by reason of many and far-out marriages, was a creed of the promoter’s—the only one he held, so far as I know, and for this reason he would not have drawn Arthur into anything doubtful; doubtful, that is, as he understood the meaning of the word. Decidedly not; he wanted to help himself on in the world, and, if Arthur would only aid him with money, Squire Dudley too. In the distance, Mr. Black prophetically beheld Arthur rich, happy, prosperous. He saw him, not a tiller of the ground, but a coiner of gold. If Mr. Black believed implicitly in anything excepting himself, it was in the vast capabilities of the PROTECTOR BREAD AND FLOUR COMPANY, LIMITED. It was his ship; let him but once launch the scheme and the world should see. It should plough the ocean and bring back cargoes of gold; it should place Mr. Black beyond the frowns of fortune; it should make a man of Arthur Dudley; it should place him in that pecuniary harbour where the world’s storms are unheeded, in which to the gallant vessel, riding safely at anchor, the waves of the great sea signify as little as ripples on the stream. What Mr. Black had always wanted was, according to his own statement, capital—given to him at any stage of his career (depending somewhat, however, on the stage he had reached), one hundred, five hundred, one thousand pounds, and Mr. Black saw his way clear to fortune. All his life he had been racing after this phantom, which as constantly eluded his grasp, for what seemed capital to him one day was not capital the next. Suppose, for instance, this week one hundred pounds bounded the horizon of his desires, next week he discovered two were needed to accomplish his object. Truth was, his appetite grew by what it fed on, and the meal which one day he fancied would prove a feast, he turned from the following, as unfit to satisfy even a beggar. To have heard Mr. Black discourse about a residence, for instance, concerning the accommodation he considered necessary, the worldly position he regarded as essential to happiness, the servants such an establishment required, no one would have imagined he had ever been reduced to lodgings in Hoxton, where he was served by the dirtiest of slipshod maids, and had his beer—when he could pay for it—from “round the corner.”