"Sure!" echoed Mark, opening his small grey eyes very wide in surprise. "Of course I am sure. Do you think I should forget to bring it you? Let me have it at once, there's a good brother. Carine will think I am never coming; we have to go to two parties tonight." Oswald wrote the cheque and gave it him. It was a cheque of the firm: "Bracknell, Street, and Oswald Cray:" for Oswald's name appeared now. And Mr. Mark carried it off with him. "There's a good brother," indeed! I wonder how he slept that night! CHAPTER XLVII. COMMOTION. With the wing of the dawn--that is, with the wing of the dawn for business in London--Mark Cray was at the offices in the City. Barker was there before him, and started forward to meet him as he entered. Mark had not succeeded in seeing Barker the previous night. "Cray, it's all up. I'm afraid it's all up." "Have you heard from Wales?" "I got a telegram this morning. There's an irruption of water, in earnest this time. It's flowing in like so many pumps. Look here." Mark's hands shook as he laid hold of the telegram. "I wasn't in bed till three o'clock," said he, as if he would give an excuse for the signs of agitation. But though he tried to account for his shaking hands, he could not for his scared face. Yes Mr. Barker was no doubt right: it was "all up" with the Great Wheal Bang. Mark and he stood alone over the table in the board-room: in consultation as to what they could do, and what they might do. Might they dare--allowing that the public still reposed in happy security--to take some shares into the market, and secure themselves something out of the wreck? Barker was all for doing it; at any rate for _trying_ it--"whether it would work," he said. Mark hung back in indecision: he thought there might be after-consequences. He told Barker the episode of Mr. Brackenbury's visit, and of his satisfying that gentleman with the cheque of Bracknell, Street, and Oswald Cray, which cheque was no doubt cashed by that time. "Mean old idiot!" apostrophised Mr. Barker. "That's always the way with those petty people. They'll make more fuss over their paltry hundred pounds or two than others do over thousands. I'd not have paid him, Mark." "I couldn't help it," said Mark. "You should have seen the work he made. Besides, if I had not, he'd have proclaimed the thing from one end of London to another." "Well, about these shares," said Barker. "We must make as much as ever we can. Will you go, or shall I?" "Perhaps it's known already," returned Mark, dubiously. "Perhaps it isn't. Brackenbury gave you his word that he'd keep quiet, and who else is likely to know it? Letters _can't_ get here till the afternoon post, and nobody at the mine would make it their business to telegraph up."