"My dear fellow, it's a stupendous beginning!" exclaimed Major Vernon; "it's a princely beginning; it's a Napoleonic beginning. But that two thou isn't meant for a blind, is it? It's not to be the beginning, middle, and the end? You're not going to do the gentle bolt—eh?" "What do you mean?" "You're not going to run away? You're not going to renounce the pomps and vanities of this wicked world, and make an early expedition across the herring-pond—eh, friend of my soul?" "Why should I run away?" asked Henry Dunbar, sternly. "That's the very thing I say myself, dear boy. Why should you? A wise man doesn't run away from landed estates, and fine houses, and half a million of money. But when you broke that claret-glass after dinner, it struck me somehow that you were—shall I venture the word?—_rather_ nervous! Nervous people do all manner of things. Give me your word that you're not going to bolt, and I'm satisfied." "I tell you, I have no such idea in my mind," Mr. Dunbar answered, with increasing impatience. "Will that do?" "It will, dear boy. Your hand upon it! What a cold hand you've got! Take care of yourself; and once more—good night!" "You're going to London?" "Yes—to cash the cheques, and make a few business arrangements." Mr. Dunbar bolted the great door as the footsteps of his friend the Major died away upon the gravelled walk, which had been quickly dried by the frosty wind. The banker had dismissed his servants at ten o'clock that night; so there was nobody to wait upon him, or to watch him, when he went back to the tapestried room. He sat by the low fire for a little time, thinking, with a settled gloom upon his face, and drinking Burgundy out of a tumbler. Then he went to bed; and the light of the night-lamp shining upon his face as he slept, showed it distorted by strange shadows, that were not altogether the shadows of the draperies above his head. Major Vernon walked briskly down the long avenue leading to the lodge-gates. "Two thou' is comfortable," he muttered to himself; "very satisfactory for a first go-in at the gold-diggin's! but I shall expect my California to produce a little more than that before we close the shaft, and retire upon the profits of the speculation. I _think_ my friend is safe—I don't think he'll run away. But I shall keep my eye upon him, nevertheless. The human eye is a great institution; and I shall watch my friend." In spite of a natural eagerness to transform those oblong slips of paper—the cheques signed with the well-known name of Henry Dunbar—into the still more convenient and flimsy paper circulating medium dispensed by the Old Lady in Threadneedle Street, or the yellow coinage of the realm, Major Vernon did not seem in any very great hurry to leave Lisford.