Some of the usual company were already assembled, although it was as yet hardly eight. The money-lender was there, sitting in his corner, taking his tobacco and his grog in silence. The decayed Barrister was there, his glass of old and mild before him, reading the morning newspaper. The ex-M.P. was there. When Checkley tumbled into the room, they looked up in surprise. When he gazed about him wildly and gasped, they were astonished, for he seemed like unto one about to have a fit. 'Give me something, Robert--give me something,' he cried. 'Quick--something strong. I'll have it short. Quick--quick!' Robert brought him a small glass of brandy, which he swallowed hastily. 'Oh!' he groaned, sitting up, 'I've seen-- I've seen----' 'You look as if you had seen a ghost,' said the barmaid, who had come along with a glass of water. 'Shall I bathe your forehead?' 'No--no. I am better now--I am all right again.--Gentlemen'--he looked round the room solemnly--'I've seen this evening a good man--an old man--a great man--a rich man; gentlemen, wrecked and cast away and destroyed and ruined. With a little devil of a woman to laugh at him!' 'They don't generally laugh at the men when they are ruined,' said Mr. Langhorne. 'They laugh while they are ruining them. It's fun to them. So it is to the men. Great fun it is while it lasts. I daresay the little woman won't really laugh at him. In my case----' His case was left untold, because he stopped and buried his head in his newspaper. Then Shylock spoke. He removed his pipe from his lips and spoke, moved, after his kind, by the mention of the words wreck and ruin, just as the vulture pricks up its feathers at the word death. 'To see a rich man wrecked and ruined, Mr. Checkley, is a thing which a man may see every day. The thing is not to lose by their wreck--to make money out of it. Rich men are always being wrecked and ruined. What else can you expect if men refuse to pay their interest and to meet their bills? The melancholy thing--ah! the real sadness--is the ruin of a man who has trusted his fellow creatures and got taken in for his pains. Only this morning I find that I've been let in by a swindler--a common swindler, gentlemen--who comes round and says he can't pay up--can't pay up--and I'm welcome to the sticks.--Which kind of man might your friend be, Mr. Checkley, the man who's trusted his neighbour and got left--or the neighbour who's ramped the man that trusted him?' 'It isn't money at all,' Checkley replied. 'Then, sir, if it isn't money,' said the money-lender, 'I don't know why you come in frightening this honourable company out of their wits. If it isn't money, how the devil can the gentleman be wrecked and ruined?' For two hours Mr. Checkley sat in silence, evidently not listening to what was said. Then he turned to Mr. Langhorne the Barrister: 'You've known Mr. Edmund Gray a long time, I believe?' 'Nine years--ten years--since he came to the Inn.'