"Yes; but your schemes always want money first." "Well, hang it all, lad! you can't expect a crop of potatoes without planting a few bits first. It wouldn't want much. Only about fifty pounds. A hundred would be better, but we could make fifty do." Harry shook his head. "Come, come; you haven't heard half yet. I've the genuine information. It would be worth a pile of money. It's our chance now--such a chance as may never occur again." "No, no; don't tempt me, Vic," said Harry, after a long whimpered conversation. "Tempt? I feel disposed to force you, lad. It makes me half wild to see you degraded to such work as this. Why, if we do as I propose you will be in a position to follow out your aunt's instructions, engage lawyers to push on your case, and while you obtain your rights, I shall be in a position to ask your sister's hand without the chance of a refusal. I tell you the thing's safe." "No, no," said Harry, shaking his head; "it's too risky. We should lose and be worse off than ever." "With a horse like that, and me with safe private information about him!" "No," said Harry, "I won't. I'm going to keep steadily on here, and, as the governor calls it, plod." "That you're not, if I know it," cried Pradelle indignantly. "I won't stand it. It's disgraceful. You shan't throw yourself away." "But I've got no money, old fellow." "Nonsense! Get some of the old man." "No; I've done it too often. He won't stand it now." "Well, of your aunt." "She hasn't a penny but what my father lets her have." "Your sister. Come, she would let you have some." Harry shook his head. "No, I'm not going to ask her. It's no good, Vic; I won't." "Well," said Pradelle, apostrophising an ingot of tin as it lay at his feet glistening with iridescent hues, "if any one had told me, I wouldn't have believed it. Why, Harry, lad, you've only been a month at this mill-horse life, and you're quite changed. What have they been doing to you, man?" "Breaking my spirit, I suppose, they'd call it," said the young man bitterly. "Nonsense! yours isn't a spirit to be broken in to a beggarly trade. Think of what your aunt has said to you, as well as to me. Your estates, your title, the woman you are to marry. Why, Harry, lad, you don't think I'm going to sit still and see you break down without a word?" Harry shook his head. "Get out! I won't have it. You want waking up," said Pradelle in a low, earnest voice. "Think, lad, a few pounds placed as I could place 'em, and there's fortune for in both, without reckoning on what you could do in France. As your aunt say, there's money and a title waiting for you if you'll only stretch out your hand to take 'em. Come, rouse yourself. Harry Vine isn't the lad to settle down to this drudgery. Why, I thought it was one of the workmen when I came up." "It's of no use," said Harry gloomily, as he seated himself on the ingots of tin. "A man must submit to his fate."