The partnership of which Mr. Boyle was a member was evidently sound--the name of Czernwitz was enough to show that; there could be little doubt of the banking support behind such an establishment; but the relations between partners often involve special details of which the outside world is ignorant, the moment might be one in which it was inconvenient to approach the bank in the name of the firm; a large concession might, for all he knew, have just been obtained for some common purpose; Mr. Boyle himself might have in hand a personal venture bearing no relation to the transactions of the partnership; he might even very probably be gathering, from more than one quarter, such small sums as he required for the moment. A man must have but little acquaintance with the City whose imagination could not suggest such contingencies, and upon an intimate acquaintance with the City and all its undercurrents Mr. Clutterbuck very properly prided himself. During that brief walk all these considerations were at work in Mr. Clutterbuck's mind, and severally leading him to an act of generosity which the future was amply to justify. He went down to the docks; he entered the warehouse, and was there astonished to observe so many cases, each so full of brine, and that brine so packed with such a vast assemblage of eggs held beneath the surface by wire lattices, that an impression of incalculable wealth soon occupied the whole of his spirit; for he perceived not only the paltry million in which Mr. Boyle had apparently embarked some private moneys (the boxes were marked with his name), but the vast stores of perhaps twenty other merchants who had rallied round England in her hour of need and had prepared an inexhaustible supply of sterilised organic albumenoids for the gallant lads at the front. He went up several stairs through what must have been three hundred yards of corridor with eggs and eggs and eggs on every side--it seemed to him a mile--he pushed through a dusty door and saw at last the goal of his journey: Mr. Boyle himself. Mr. Boyle was wearing a dazzling top hat, he was dressed in a brilliant cashmere twill relieved by a large yellow flower in his buttonhole, and was seated before a little instrument wherein an electric lamp, piercing the translucency of a sample egg, determined whether it were or were not still suitable for human food. Mr. Boyle recognised his visitor, nodded in a courteous but not effusive way, and continued his observations. He rose at last, and offered Mr. Clutterbuck a squint (an offer which that gentleman was glad to accept), and explained to him the working of the test; then he removed the egg from its position before the electric lamp, deposited it with care beneath the brine under that section of the lattice to which it belonged, and said with a heartiness which his illness could not entirely destroy: "What brings you here?" Mr. Clutterbuck in some astonishment referred to their conversation of the night before.