Bitterly now he remembered Nellie and his stock—the latter sold at a considerable sacrifice. The young bullocks and the fat beeves, the flocks of sheep, and the lambs which ought to have been kept over the winter, appeared again, and formed a sad procession before his mind’s eye. Hay parted with before the price rose at the turn of the year; wheat threshed off and sent to market, when the markets were falling instead of rising; straw disposed of at rates which scarcely left a margin of profit, after deducting cartage and expenses—these things recurred to the Squire’s memory, and roused fresh anger in his heart against the man who had led him so grievously astray. Now he recollected Mr. Stewart’s prophetic words, and cursed that gentleman’s clear-sightedness as he did so. Now he recalled those sentences—“I am prepared to lose, and you are not;” “I can afford to wait; you, perhaps, are differently situated;” and they seemed to make his difficulty clear in a moment. “He was not prepared to lose—he was not able to wait.” He had stretched his arm out farther than he could draw it back; to lose, with him meant ruin; to wait, meant anxiety and distress unutterable. What should he do? Looking back over the events of the previous twelve months, Squire Dudley lamented his own credulity and anathematized Mr. Black. He did not regret joining the Protector, or accepting the secretaryship, or leaving Berrie Down, but he bit his nails and drummed upon the table, and then, rising, kicked his chair over, and walked up and down the room, while he called himself all the names imaginable for having accepted bills and spent money, and bought the house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He had been eager to buy that house the moment Mr. Black said it was in the market. He would scarcely take time to look over the premises before closing with the owner, so fearful was he of another purchaser forestalling him; but he forgot all this now, and worked himself up into the belief that the promoter had given him no rest till the deposit was paid and the deeds were signed. He had thought himself so clever, and, behold, another hand stretched out beyond his, secured the prize. He had got nothing but a thousand a year and his shares, and he had to work for his thousand a year, do a vast amount more than “read the _Times_, and talk to people.” He had to write letters, at least dictate them, or else put down the heads which were to be written, and then see that his clerk filled them in properly, which the clerk never did sufficiently well to satisfy Arthur, who, on the whole, declared he found it easier to take the correspondence himself, than “to try to hammer the sense of what he wanted conveyed into any other person’s stupid head.”