In Joseph’s dream, the seven fat kine preceded the seven lean; the same rule was observed also in Squire Dudley’s less prudent experience, though it produced by no means a like result. Never, for many and many a long year, had Arthur been so flush of cash, and so careless about expending it, as in the days before Mr. Stewart’s friendly visit. Lightly come, lightly gone, that was the way with his money then! It is difficult for a man, such as Arthur Dudley, exactly to realise the fact that lending his name may eventually prove the hardest day’s work he ever did in his life; in truth, it is a fact difficult for any one unacquainted with business, to understand theoretically. It is but a few strokes of the pen, and the thing is done. Your obliging friend, who has been kind enough to draw out the document for you, and perhaps even buy the stamp, gets the paper discounted. He takes out of it what you promised to let him have, and duly hands over the remainder. The money is then a certainty—the bill, an illusion, is gone; your friend will meet it, never fear. He tells you not to trouble your head about the matter. Like Mr. Black, he will “take a memorandum of it,” and that memorandum seems to you a perfect security for the genuineness of the transaction. Time, however, goes by; the money is spent, the bill is coming due; then it is the first item which appears the illusion; the latter, the certainty. Concerning wasted sovereigns and mis-spent five-pound notes, a useless jeremiade is sung. If you had but the past to live over again, you think, how differently you would act; meantime, however, you cannot live the past over again, and the bill is coming due. When it does come due, there is only one thing of which you may be morally certain, namely, that you will have to take it up; that, spite of your friend’s memorandum and assurances, he will be at the last moment disappointed, and so disappoint you. You have had your cake, or at least a portion of that dainty; you have eaten and digested it; and now comes the time for payment; now come the anxious days and sleepless nights; now begins the begging, borrowing, realising; you have within five pounds of the amount required—you might as well not have a penny; you must scrape those other hundred shillings together before five o’clock on the evening of the day of presentation, or else your precious document falls into the notary’s hands. In his hands there is still another short chance for your credit; but fail to avail yourself of that, and what ensues?