The clerks smiled as they looked up from their desks; and the gentleman in the white hat dropped his pencil, and ran to a little wooden door in the partition, over which Harcourt Lowther’s hat made itself visible. “My dear Lowther!” he exclaimed, presenting himself in the smaller office, and stretching out both his hands towards the intruder; “this _is_ a surprise; I thought you were at the Antipodes.” “Yes, that’s the way of the world,” answered Mr. Lowther, rather peevishly; “a man is banished to some outlandish hole at the remotest end of the universe, _ergo_ he’s never to return to the civilized half of the globe.” “But it seems only yesterday when----” “And that’s another cruel thing a man’s friends say to him when he does turn up in the civilized hemisphere,” interrupted Mr. Lowther. “‘It seems only yesterday when you left us;’ that is to say, life has been so pleasant and rapid for us, amidst all the gaieties and luxuries and successes of the most wonderful city in the world, that we are utterly unable to believe in the dreary months and years that you’ve had to drag out, poor devil, in your hole on the other side of the line. That’s what a fellow’s friends _mean_ when they talk their confounded humbug about it’s only seeming yesterday.” Harcourt Lowther’s City friend was not the most brilliant or original of men when you took him away from the stockbroking interests. He stared blankly during Mr. Lowther’s discontented remarks upon the selfishness of mankind. “Haw! that’s good. Meant no offence by allusion to yesterday; only meant that I was jolly glad to see you, you know, and so on. But, you see, a fellow turning up in the City when you’ve been given to understand that he’s in Van Diemen’s Land is rather a surprise, you know. Can I do anything for you? I’ll tell you what, old fellow; I can put you up to a good thing in the Etruscan Loan,--panic prices,--nine percent, and certain to turn up trumps in the long run.” Mr. Lowther smiled bitterly. “Do you suppose that I’ve any money to invest; or that if I had money, I’m the sort of man to sink the glorious principal for the sake of some miserable dribblings in the way of interest? No, my dear Wilderson, you _can_ do me a good turn, but it’s in quite another direction. Just step this way.” He put his hand on his friend’s shoulder, and led him to the door leading into the court. Here, safely out of the hearing of the clerks at work in the inner office, Mr. Lowther lowered his voice to a confidential tone. “Wilderson,” he said, “I think you know Lionel Hillary, the Australian merchant?” “Hillary and Co.?” exclaimed Mr. Wilderson,--“I should flatter myself I did.” “I want you to tell me all about him--how he stands--how he has stood for some time past; in short, all you know about him.” The stockbroker pulled his hay-coloured whiskers thoughtfully, and shook his head. “These sort of things are rather difficult to _know_,” he said, “but a man may have his thoughts about ’em.”