Mr. Cope was a heavily-built, resolute-looking man of middle age, with a brusque business manner, which had become so confirmed in him by habit that he could not throw it off in private life. He had neither the education nor the manners of a well-bred gentleman, but he inspired respect by the shrewdness of his intellect, and a certain innate force of character which made itself felt by all with whom he came in contact. His father had originally been office-boy to the firm of Sugden and Co., but, in the course of thirty years, had gradually worked his way up to the honourable post of managing clerk. Ultimately, three or four years before his death, he had been elevated to a junior partnership. Already young Horatio Cope, although merely filling the position of an ordinary clerk in the bank, had displayed such natural aptitude as a financier that, when his father died, the vacant post was at once given him, and the firm had never had reason to regret the choice thus made. As time went on, the two oldest members of the Sugden family died within a few months of each other. Two or three years later the youngest of the three brothers was accidentally drowned. Of the original firm there then were left but two young men, of three or four and twenty, cousins, who knew little or nothing about the business, who were rich enough to live without it, and who preferred a life of ease and pleasure to the cares and toils which must devolve on those who would successfully steer a large financial concern through the troubled waters of speculation. In this crisis all that could be done was to fall back on Horatio Cope. He was master of the situation, and he knew it. The result was that he was offered a partnership in the firm on equal terms with the two cousins. They were to supply the capital necessary for the conduct of the business, but the entire management was to devolve on him. All this had happened several years ago; and in Duxley and its neighbourhood few men were better known, or more generally esteemed, than Mr. Cope.