_O'Ded._ I have this morning received a letter from the agent, stating the whole concern to have failed, the partners to be bankrupts, and the property consigned to assignees not to promise, as a final dividend, more than one shilling in the pound. This letter will explain the rest. _Sir Row._ How! I was not prepared for this--What's to be done? _O'Ded._ When one loses a sum of money that isn't one's own, there's but one thing to be done. _Sir Row._ And what is that? _O'Ded._ To pay it back again. _Sir Row._ You know that to be impossible, utterly impossible. _O'Ded._ Then, sir Rowland, take the word of _Cornelius O'Dedimus_, attorney at law, his lordship will rigidly exact the money, to the uttermost farthing. _Sir Row._ You are fond, sir, of throwing out these hints to his disadvantage. _O'Ded._ I am bold to speak it--I am possessed of a secret, sir Rowland, in regard to his lordship. _Sir Row._ (_alarmed._) What is it you mean? _O'Ded._ I thought I told you it was a _secret_. _Sir Row._ But to me you should have no secrets that regard my family. _O'Ded._ With submission, sir Rowland, his lordship is my client, as well as yourself, and I have learned from the practice of the courts, that an attorney who blabs in his business has soon no suit to his back. _Sir Row._ But this affair, perhaps, involves my deepest interest--my character--my all is at stake. _O'Ded._ Have done wid your pumping now--d'ye think I am a basket full of cinders, that I'm to be sifted after this fashion? _Sir Row._ Answer but this--does it relate to Charles, my son? _O'Ded._ Sartinly, the young gentleman has a small bit of interest in the question. _Sir Row._ One thing more. Does it allude to a transaction which happened some years ago--am I a principal concerned in it? _O'Ded._ Devil a ha'porth--it happened only six months past. _Sir R._ Enough--I breathe again. _O'Ded._ I'm glad of that, for may-be you'll now let me breathe to tell you that as I know lord Austencourt's private character better than you do, my life to a bundle of parchment, he'll even arrest ye for the money. _Sir R._ Impossible, he cannot be such a villain! _Abel Grouse._ (_without_) What ho! is the lawyer within? _Sir Row._ Who interrupts us? _O'Ded._ 'Tis the strange man that lives on the common--his name is Abel Grouse--he's coming up. _Sir R._ I'll wait till you dismiss him, for I cannot encounter any one at present. Misfortunes crowd upon me; and one act of guilt has drawn the vengeance of Heaven on my head, and will pursue me to the grave. [_Exit to an inner room._ _O'Ded._ Och! if a small gale of adversity blows up such a storm as this, we shall have a pretty hurricane by and by, when you larn a little more of your hopeful nephew, and see his new matrimonial scheme fall to the ground, like buttermilk through a sieve. _Enter_ Abel Grouse. _Abel Grouse._ Now, sir, you are jackall, as I take it, to lord Austencourt.