"Certainly, though I should not care to talk it quite so plainly as did her Majesty. She said, 'I made you, proud prelate, and by ---- I will unmake you!' I say, 'You brought this estate to me, and I intend to wind it up honestly without fear or favour.'" "Damn you!" said Mr. Forde with a sincerity and vigour the Virgin Queen herself might have envied. Like Mortomley, whom he had netted, he found himself utterly taken in. "Would to God!" he remarked, with that reference to a supreme power people are apt to make when they have exhausted the resources of all their own idols and found them really of very little avail, "Would to God! I had left the management of Mortomley's Estate to that fool Mortomley himself and his solicitor. They would have considered ME, and this selfish brute will not." Which was indeed quite true. A man had always better by far place himself in the hands of a man who is a gentleman, even if he be a fool, than of a man who is a cad, even though he be wise. Save through misadventure, the gentleman will not throw over even a cad; but the cad waits his opportunity and throws over friend and foe, gentle and simple, with equal impartiality. Mr. Swanland did at all events, and therein, situated as he chanced to be, he was wise. For with the best intentions in the world, Mr. Forde had hitherto always managed to bring those trustees who were simple enough or dishonest enough to do his bidding to ultimate grief. When Mr. Swanland spoke of the Manager of the General Chemical Company as so mentally short-sighted that he could only see to twelve o'clock that day, he described his character to a nicety. Probably, through no fault of his own in the first instance, Mr. Forde eventually found himself traversing a path which led him at one time along the brink of a precipice, at another across a country intersected by deep ravines and dangerous gulleys, and any man who had fully realised the peril of his position must either have abandoned the idea of going further in despair, or have so utterly lost his head as to have been dashed to pieces long before the period when this story opens. But Mr. Forde did not realise his position, or the position of the General Chemical Company. He had faith if he could only hold out long enough relief would come--to him--or to the Company. Naturally he hoped it would come to him first, in which case he confided to a few chosen friends the fact that, if he were to walk out of the place, the directors would have to close the wharf-gates within four-and-twenty hours, but if relief were to pay a preliminary visit to the Company, he knew such a stroke of good fortune must ultimately benefit him.