"Lovey!" he exclaimed, upon meeting his wife, "I have been thinking over what you said about getting my notes cashed. I believe I'll take Bullion's offer and salt the money down. Probably, now, he will give me a better trade, for there is considerable more due." "Oh, John! how glad I am! You _will_ do it to-morrow,--won't you, now?" "Yes, I'll settle with him to-morrow." He was thinking of the fact that Tonsor had bought shares for Bullion, and he wondered what the move meant. A house divided against itself could not stand; and he said to himself, that a man must be uncommonly deep to be a "bull" and a "bear" at the same time. There was no doubt that Bullion had embarked in some speculation which he had not seen fit to make known to his agent. "There you go,--off into one of your fogs again!" said the wife, noticing his suddenly abstracted air. "That's the way you have done for the last three months,--ever since you began with that hateful man." "I get to thinking about affairs, my little woman, and I don't want to bother your simple head with them; so I go cruising off in the fog, as you call it, by myself." "Oh, if you once get through with that man's affairs, we'll have no more fogs!" "No, deary, we'll have summer weather and a smooth sea, I hope, for the rest of our voyage." "You see, John, I have been dreadfully anxious, more than I could tell you. If anything goes wrong, I've always noticed that it isn't the big people that have to suffer; it's the smaller ones that get caught." "Yes, it's an old story; the big flies break out of the spider's net; the little chaps hang there. But I'll settle up the business to-morrow. I shall have enough to buy us a little house in the country,--a snug box, with a garden; then I'll get a horse to drive about with, and we'll take some comfort. Come, little woman, sit on my knee! Come, baby, here is a knee for you, too!" Holding them in his arms, he still mused upon the morrow, and once and again charged his mind to remember "two thousand for Sandford, ten thousand for Danforth and Dot!" CHAPTER XXVII.