Much money, chiefly that of others, had passed through Sharkley's hands in his time, and much of it, as a matter of course, was never accounted for by him; but he had never before possessed so large a sum at once, and certainly seldom one so easily won, as that presented to him by the titular Lord Lamorna. All the exultation that avarice, covetousness, and successful roguery can inspire glowed in his arid heart, and he walked slowly onward, immersed in thoughts peculiarly his own, as to the mode in which he would invest it, and foresaw how it must and should double, treble, and quadruple itself ere long; how lands, and houses, messuages and tenements, mills and meadows, should all become his; and so he wove his golden visions, even as Alnaschar in the Arabian fable wove his over the basket of frail and brittle glass; and as he proceeded, ever and anon he felt, with a grimace of satisfaction, for the pocket-book containing his beloved cheques. Some miles of country lay between Rhoscadzhel and Penzance, where he meant to take the railway for his own place. As his penurious spirit had prevented him from hiring a vehicle, he pursued the way on foot; but he sometimes lost it, darkness having set in, and yet he saw nothing of the lights of the town. He had, in his mental abstraction, walked, or wandered on, he scarcely knew whither, and he only paused from time to time to uplift his clenched hands, to mutter and sigh in angry bitterness of spirit that he had not extracted more from Downie Trevelyan, when he had it in his power to put on the screw with vigour, and anon he would ponder as to whether he had not been too precipitate, and whether he had done a wise thing in selling to him the interests of young Denzil, as these might have proved pecuniarily more valuable; but then poor Denzil was so far away, and from all Sharkley could hear and read in the newspapers, he might never see England more. For the first time in his life, Mr. Sharkley found himself taking an interest in our Indian military affairs.