He comforted his sad heart by the very object of his sadness, as is our pathetic human way. He took a sort of mournful pride in handling the great key that gave him access to the warehouse, and a peculiar pleasure in snubbing the servant who had denied him when he had called before. These eggs after all were a possession; they were a tangible thing, a million was their number; the very boxes in which they soaked were property; and it cannot be denied that Mr. Clutterbuck, who had hitherto possessed no real thing nor extended his personality to any visible objects beyond his furniture, his clothes, his pipe, his bicycle, and his wife, could not but be influenced by the sense of ownership. Sometimes he would select an egg at random, and placing it in the machine which had been witness of his first decisive interview, he would examine whether or no it were still transparent; but the occupation was but a pastime. Often he did not really note their condition, and when he did note it, whether that condition were satisfactory or no, he would replace the sample as solemnly as he had chosen it. Day after day it was Mr. Clutterbuck's mournful occupation to regard them as they lay stilly in their brine, these eggs that had so long awaited the call to arms from South Africa; that call which never came. To complete his despair the rumours of a full treaty of peace, which had tortured him for a whole week, were finally confirmed. He seemed irrecoverably lost, and though a preserved egg will always fetch its price in this country, yet the distribution of so vast a number, the search for a market, and the presence of such considerable competitors on every side--the total length of the boxes in which the eggs were stored amounted to no less than six miles and one-third--made him despair of recovering even one-half of the original sum which he had risked. Mr. Clutterbuck must not be blamed for an anxiety common to every man of affairs in speculations which have not yet matured: and those who, from a more exalted position in society, or from a more profound study of our institutions would have reposed confidence in the equity of the Government, must not blame the humble merchant of Croydon if in his bewilderment he misjudged for a moment the temper of a British Cabinet. That temper did not betray him. The Government, at the close of the war were more than just--they were bountiful to those who, in the expectation of a prolonged conflict, had accumulated stores for the army.