Squire Culpepper, was laid up with an attack of his old enemy the gout. Thereby his temper was by no means improved. But to the ordinary pains which attend podagra was superadded another source of irritation and alarm. The shares of the Alcazar Silver Mining Company, in which promising speculation the Squire had invested the whole of his savings, had of late been going down slowly but steadily in the market. It was altogether unaccountable. They had no sooner reached the high-water point of value than they began to fall. But the difficulty had been to know when the high-water mark was reached. The Squire had bought at a low figure—at a remarkably low figure—and when, subsequently, the shares had risen so tremendously in value, he had often been tempted to sell out and realize. But the temptation to keep holding on, in the hope of being able to realize still larger profits, had hitherto proved the stronger of the two. At first he had looked upon the decline as being merely one of those ordinary market fluctuations such as even the best securities are liable to at times. But at length he took alarm and wrote to his friend Mr. Bird, the secretary of the company, and the man who had persuaded him to invest so heavily in Alcazar securities. To the Squire’s letter Mr. Bird replied as under: “My Dear Mr. Culpepper,—Your note of yesterday did not surprise me in the least. I quite expected to hear from you some days ago respecting the fall in Alcazars. Several other shareholders have either written to me or seen me on the same subject. The truth is that the partisans of a rival company (a company, be it said, whose shares have never yet risen to par, and are never likely to do so) have been doing their best to injure us by spreading abroad a report that a sudden irruption of water had put a stop to all our workings for an indefinite length of time. The whole affair is an infamous canard, having no other object than to discredit us in the opinion of the public. Unfortunately it is next to impossible to bring such things home to any particular individual, but I have every reason to believe that one or two who are most deeply implicated in this scandalous affair have been buying heavily for the rise which is sure to take place in a few days from the present time; and I strongly advise you, my dear sir, to follow their example. You cannot possibly do better. So satisfied am I on that point, that within the last few days I have invested every spare shilling of my own in Alcazars. “In conclusion, I may just state that according to advices from our South American managers up to the latest date, received by me per last night’s mail, the mine was never in so flourishing a condition as at the present moment. “It is with the utmost confidence that I look forward to the declaration of a dividend and a bonus equivalent in the gross to seventy-five per cent. per annum, at the close of the current half-year. “I remain, my dear Mr. Culpepper,