All in vain he and Mr. Stewart—united at last—moved and seconded various courageous resolutions; the other directors were cowardly, and refused to acquiesce. Mr. Black was twitted with the ill success of many of his bantlings; Mr. Stewart was reminded of the fact that his nephew had been the first to leave the ship. “The very fust shares,” remarked Mr. Smithers, the great miller at Plaistow, worth Heaven only knew how much money, and likely, before he died, to be worth a few hundreds of thousands more—“the very fust shares as was sold out of this here Company below their aktual market value was the property of your nephew, Mr. Stewart—your own nephew, Mr. Aymescourt Croft.” “Am I answerable for the misdeeds of my nephew?” Mr. Stewart inquired; whereupon Mr. Smithers declared he did not know; that perhaps, Mr. Croft had very good reasons for acting as he did, and that it might have been better for all parties concerned if “everybody had sold their shares,” when Lord Kemms repudiated the Protector. Let the argument commence where it would, it always ended in Lord Kemms—it always reverted to the fact that Mr. Black had used his name without authority, and that Mr. Stewart’s noble relative had been the first to damage the Company, as his nephew was the first to dispose of his shares. The business men on the Direction attributed all the disasters of the Protector to having so many “nobs” on the Board; while the Sirs, and Generals, and gentlemen possessed of landed property conceived it was the City element which had militated against the success of their enterprise. One singular fact in connection with this subject may here be noted, namely, that the men who had not paid for their shares at all, such, for example, as Mr. Smithers, General Sinclair, &c., were much more vehement concerning their disappointment than those who really held a large pecuniary stake in the Protector. It is more difficult, perhaps, to bear with equanimity the loss of hope than the loss of money, and individuals who, like Arthur Dudley, had expected to realise fortunes out of nothing, were much more disheartened by the prospect of failure than persons who, having “paid their shilling, took their risk.” This remark applies only, however, to the directors. The shareholders having, one and all, hoped to realize their ten or twenty, or fifty or a hundred per cent., were as virtuously indignant as those members of the Board who had sold their names for scrip. Speculators all—gamblers as much as the man who stakes his last guinea on a throw of the dice—they were yet neither to hold nor to bind when the speculation turned out ill, when the throw of the dice threatened to leave them minus the money they had invested!