“I was born at a little town in the midland counties,” began Tom. “My father was chief medical practitioner in the place, and attended all the swells of the neighbourhood. His intention from the first was to bring me up to the law; so, as soon as I was old enough, he had me articled to old Hoskyns, his bosom friend, and the chief solicitor in the little town. I didn’t like the law—in fact, I hated it; but there seemed no better prospect for me at that time, so I submitted to my fate without a murmur. My father died when I was seventeen, leaving me a fortune of six thousand pounds. I stayed quietly on with Hoskyns till I was twenty-one. The day I was of age, the old gentleman called me into his private room, congratulated me on having attained my majority, and asked me in what way I intended to invest my six thousand pounds. ‘I am not going to invest it: I am going to speculate with it,’ was my answer. The old lawyer looked at me as if I were a madman. ‘Going to speculate in what?’ he asked faintly. ‘Going to speculate on the Stock Exchange,’ was my reply. Well, the old gentleman raved and stormed, and talked to me as though I were a son of his own, even hinting at a possible partnership in time to come. But my mind had long been made up, and nothing he had to say could move me. It seemed to me that in my six thousand pounds I had the foundation of a fortune which might in time grow into something colossal. It is true that the course I had laid down for myself was not without its risks. It was quite possible that instead of building up a large fortune, I should lose the little one I had already. Well, should that black day ever come, it would be time enough then to think of going back to Hoskyns, and of settling down for life as the clerk of a provincial lawyer. “My father’s death left me without any relations, except some far-away cousins whom I had never seen. There was nothing to keep me in my native town, so I set out for London, with many prophecies of coming ruin ringing in my ears. I hired a couple of cheap rooms in a quiet city court, and set up in business as a speculator, and to that business I have stuck ever since.” “Which is as much as to say that you have been successful in it,” said Lionel. “I _have_ been successful in it. Not perhaps quite so successful as my sanguine youthful hopes led me to believe I should be; but still sufficiently so to satisfy myself that in choosing such a career I did not choose altogether unwisely.” “But how is it possible,” said Lionel, “that you, a raw country lad of one and twenty, could go and settle down in the great world of London; and, without experience of your own, or any friendly hand to guide you, could venture to play at a game which exercises some of the keenest intellects of the age—and not only venture to play at it, but rise from it a winner?”