“I will try to explain myself more clearly,” went on the great man. “When you came to me, and I said I could not entertain your proposal without a retainer, do you know what my object was? No! Well, then, I took your five hundred pounds as a guarantee for your honesty. The sum was nothing to me; but I had no intention of having my time taken up about a company, the shares in which might never be worth _that_!” and Mr. Stewart snapped his fingers contemptuously. “I am perfectly plain, you see. I knew you had been connected with company after company. I knew, in fact, you were by profession a promoter of very bad schemes; but I knew, also, you had plenty of push, and that, if you saw it was worth your while to make a company succeed, you stood a fair chance of forcing it to do so.” Mr. Black bowed. These were the first civil words Mr. Stewart had addressed to him during the interview; and, although the amount of compliment they contained might not be excessive, still there was a certain recognition of his executive and imaginative talents conveyed in them. For which reason Mr. Black bowed. “Now, if the thing be to succeed, it must not be swamped with sinecures and a multitude of ground landlords.” Well enough Mr. Black knew all Mr. Stewart implied by that sentence; but, nevertheless, he asked him for further information. “By ground landlords, I understand a number of persons who, considering the newly-discovered land their own, want to make off it as much as they can before anybody else touches a farthing—for instance, you are a ground landlord. Quite as well as I you know that Crossenhams’ mills are not worth the name of the price you have put upon them.” “I assure you it is the very lowest price the Messrs. Crossenham would take.” “And that lowest price you share with them. I am not quarrelling with such an arrangement. The prospectus could not have been put forth without some mills being secured—and, perhaps, those mills are as good for the purpose of advertising from as any other; but still I happen to know all the ins and outs of that transaction,—that your paper has been keeping Crossenham afloat, that the machinery is very old, that the buildings are very dilapidated, and that, in fact, if you had not rushed to the rescue, Messrs. Bailey and Robert Crossenham must have been gazetted ere this, and that, in the event of such a calamity happening to them, the premises could have been bought for an old song.” “What has that to do with me?” asked Mr. Black. “A man must live; and, like you, I cannot afford to spend all my time, and strength, and thought, and money, only to receive payment in shares.” “True,” said Mr. Stewart, with a dubious smile, which, however, encouraged the promoter to remark further— “The labourer is worthy of his hire.” “Humph! that depends,” observed Mr. Stewart. “On what?” asked Mr. Black. “On how much work the labourer does, and on the extent of his hire.” “Oh!” murmured the promoter.