It might be the case, as some people declared, that he had not risen from the ranks--that his real name was not Asherill--that he and his father, a respectable tradesman, having had some difference concerning the contents of the till, he was shipped out of the country and requested to stay out of it--all this might be so, but who was to prove it? and supposing it all capable of proof, who would be interested in the matter? All the king's horses and all the king's men could not undo the fact, that for twenty-five years Mr. Asherill had held up his head in the City--that he was a man of weight whom aldermen and common-councilmen delighted to honour--who had been connected with every form of speculation which the fashion of the day and the opportunities of each commercial year brought into repute. He had made money by railways and lost it, and come up again fresh and smiling as the director of various banks and insurance companies, the very names of which are now almost forgotten, so rapidly is the memory of one swindle wiped out by the collapse of another more recent. He had something to do, directly or indirectly, with nearly every "big thing" which was floated in the City. To a nicety he knew the price of a lord, and was once clever enough to bait a hook which enabled him to land a bishop. He was acquainted with baronets and knights, whose names looked remarkably well on the list of directors, whilst he had an army of generals, colonels, and majors ready at any moment to take the financial field. A ready man and an able--a man, a Yankee speculator, a canny Scot, a German adventurer, or a religious philanthropist might have sat up all night to catch napping, and eventually found the intended victim wider awake than themselves. If there were one thing more than another, always excepting sanctimoniousness, which distinguished Mr. Asherill from other people, it was his intense respectability. From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot he looked the incarnation of that god which is the Englishman's Fetish. The folds of his immaculate white cravat were in themselves letters of recommendation. Whenever any especially profitable and delicate piece of business had to be manipulated in the Bankruptcy Court, Mr. Asherill always made it a point to be present in person; and, with the exception of one Commissioner, no Judge had ever yet been known to urge an objection to any course Mr. Asherill suggested, and throw cold water on any scheme that emanated from the brain which found no mean habitation in the massive head covered with thick but perfectly snowy hair. And whatever Mr. Asherill engaged in, he carried on and through respectably. Had his lot been cast in a different sphere, he would have made a splendid butler, a model parish clerk, or a magnificent hall porter.