It was late in the evening when Patrick Onslow again found himself _en tête-à-tête_ with his host. There had been people in to dinner at the house in Park Lane, but these had gone, and Mrs. Shelf and Amy Rivers followed them to Lady Latchford’s dance. Mrs. Shelf had wished to carry Onslow also in her train, but that person stayed behind by a request which he could not very well refuse. “You will favor me very much by remaining here for the rest of the evening, Mr. Onslow,” Shelf had said in his pompous way. “I have matters of the greatest moment which I wish to discuss with you.” “I hardly know how to begin,” Shelf confessed uneasily, when they were alone. “Then let me make a suggestion,” said Onslow, with a laugh. “Come to the point at once. Let’s have the plot without any introductory chapters. You’ve told me you’ve got a scheme on hand for turning my discovery into currency, and you’ve rather hinted that it’s a dirty scheme. The only question is, how dirty? Thanks to pressure of circumstances, I’m not an over-particular person; but on points I’m very squeamish; or, in other words, I draw the line somewhere. Unless I’m very vastly mistaken, your plan will involve one in downright knavery, which is a thing all sensible men avoid if possible. Now, in my ignorance, I fancied the find might be turned to account without climbing down to that.” “Oh,” said Shelf, eagerly, “then you had a scheme in your head before you came to me?” The other shrugged his shoulders and lit a cigar. “Just a dim outline, nothing more. You see, the interior of the Everglades is absolutely untouched, by the white man’s weapons. It was vaguely supposed to be one vast lake, with oases of slime and mangroves. The lake was reported as too shallow for boats, and abounding with fevers, agues, and mosquitoes. Consequently it remained unexplored, and on the end of the Florida peninsula to-day no white man (barring myself and one or two others) has ever got further than five or eight miles in from the coast. Now, as I’ve told you, I was lucky enough to hit upon a fine deep ship-channel going in as far as the center line, and I don’t know how far beyond inside. There is good fertile country, a healthy climate and the best game-preserve on this earth. For the first comers, that interior will be just a sportsman’s paradise. My idea is two-wise. First sell the cream off the sport. Some men will give anything for shooting, and in this case there will also be the glamour of being pioneers. Each one will start determined to write a book of his opinions and doings when he gets back. By chartering a steamer and treating them well on board, they would have sporting _de luxe_, and one ought to get quite five-and-twenty chaps at five hundred guineas apiece. That gives the first crop. For the second, buy up an enormous tract of the land, which can be got for half nothing—say ten or fifteen cents an acre—boom it, and resell it in lots to Jugginses.