‘Ah! Master Arthur, things are changed since then,’ replied the old cashier. ‘Mr Henry’s not been nearly so active of late. I often think he’s not well. He seems so mopey and dull. Perhaps it will be different now you’ve come home, Mr Arthur. You’ll cheer him up a bit. He has felt Mr Crampton’s death terribly, and Miss Jenny’s too, for the matter of that, they came so quickly, one after the other, and he ought to have taken a change long ago. I’m very glad you’ve come back, sir. You’ll do him more good than anyone else could do.’ ‘I am glad also, Bloxam, for Mrs Hindes’s account of him quite alarmed me. But do you think he is really ill?’ ‘I think he is very, _very_ ill, Mr Arthur,’ returned Bloxam, mysteriously; ‘but here he is, so I will leave you together.’ Saying thus, the cashier retreated by a side door into his particular sanctum, as the glass doors from the front swung slowly on their hinges, as though propelled by an enfeebled hand, to admit Henry Hindes. He entered, looking much as he had always done of late, slouching along with a bent figure and a shaking frame. He had made some attempt, at the instigation of his wife, to brighten up his general appearance by assuming a frock coat and a tall hat, but they only served to make the difference in him more apparent. Captain Hindes could not for a moment believe the evidence of his senses, but when he was convinced that it was his brother who stood before him, he started forward to greet him with a slight cry. ‘Good God! Hal, my dear old fellow!’ he exclaimed, ‘is this you?’ ‘Who else?’ demanded Henry, with an attempt at jocularity, as he held out his hand and grasped that of Arthur. The younger man looked him in the face for a few minutes without speaking. He could not trust himself to do so. He was too infinitely shocked. _This_ Henry? Henry, whose devotion to his personal appearance had passed into a family proverb--who had always been the ‘nattiest’ youth, and the most perfectly-dressed young man, and the most faultless gentleman in the City--whose irreproachable garb and spotless linen and glossy hats had been cast in his teeth in bygone days, as witnesses that he was not fit for business or anything but a _cavalier des dames_. This limp, untidy, slovenly-looking man, with bloodshot eyes, and unhealthy complexion, his brother Henry, of whom he used to be so proud? Arthur felt a great lump rise in his throat, and could have sat down and cried to see the difference a few years had made in him. But he held his hand as in a vice instead, and replied in as hearty a voice as he could manage,-- ‘Why, dear old chap, you’re not looking yourself at all. You took me quite by surprise, though Hannah did prepare Edie and me last night to see a change in you.’ ‘Hannah, Hannah!’ cried his brother quickly; ‘what had she to say of me? What did she tell you? How dared she--I mean, why did she mention me at all?’