The truth is, on that day when his course of knavery was exposed, he had sent a trusty messenger to the meeting to report what took place, and when he learnt the result, he quietly shut himself up in his rooms at the West End, and debated with himself upon his line of conduct. “Shall I make a bolt of it?” or “Shall I fight it out?” These were the two momentous questions which he put and argued out in a dozen different ways. He knew that his father would never forgive him, and, despite all his ill conduct, this gave him, a pang or two of regret and sorrow. It was not until midnight was long past, that he settled his plans: the ashes of many cigars lay upon the table, and numerous sheets of paper, covered with figures, were torn up and scattered about the hearth, before the final resolve was made. “I’ll fight it out; I’ll go through with it,” he said at last. “The world bows down before success, no matter how it is obtained: money opens all doors, whoever knocks. I’ll go in for money--reputation be hanged. Who has got a reputation worth a button in these times? We are in the midst of a panic that will sweep away hundreds of reputations. What is the reputation of an honest bankrupt worth? Where is the flyblown reputation that money, and success, and bounce, and swagger will not cover?” So Mr. Richard Tallant began to “fight it out” next day. He served two persons with notices of action for slander, and commenced actions for libel against two newspapers; he obtained insertion of a paragraph to this effect in a monetary journal; he attended to his duties at the Meter Works with an assiduity that astonished everybody; he wrote that letter to his father, and he fought that battle at the Meter Board which we have briefly indicated; he plunged deeper and deeper into speculations, and he was successful in almost every monetary operation in which he was engaged. Meanwhile things were not quite so pleasant with Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs. His overthrow had been completed by poor Dibble’s confession. “Whom the gods devote to destruction, they first deprive of understanding.” Mr. Gibbs ought to have had sufficient experience of life to have known that his passion for revenge was mastering his cunning; he ought to have known enough of character to have seen that Dibble would break down in the part which he had assigned to him; but Fortune had permitted Gibbs to have his day, as she lets every other dog have his; and she selected her time and instruments accordingly for bringing his day to an end.