Charley stepped lighter on the ground as he left Mr. M'Ruen's house on that eventful morning than he had done for many a day. There was something delightful in the feeling that he could make money of his name in this way, as great bankers do of theirs, by putting it at the bottom of a scrap of paper. He experienced a sort of pride too in having achieved so respectable a position in the race of ruin which he was running, as to have dealings with a bill-discounter. He felt that he was putting himself on a par with great men, and rising above the low level of the infernal navvies. Mr. M'Ruen had pulled the bill out of a heap of bills which he always carried in his huge pocket-book, and showed to Charley the name of an impoverished Irish peer on the back of it; and the sight of that name had made Charley quite in love with rum. He already felt that he was almost hand-and-glove with Lord Mount-Coffeehouse; for it was a descendant of the nobleman so celebrated in song. 'Only be punctual, Mr. Tudor; only be punctual, and I will do anything for you,' Mr. M'Ruen had said, as Charley left the house. Charley, however, never had been punctual, and yet his dealings with Mr. M'Ruen had gone on from that day to this. What absolute money he had ever received into his hand he could not now have said, but it was very little, probably not amounting in all to £50. Yet he had already paid during the two years more than double that sum to this sharp-clawed vulture, and still owed him the amounts of more bills than he could number. Indeed he had kept no account of these double-fanged little documents; he had signed them whenever told to do so, and had even been so preposterously foolish as to sign them in blank. All he knew was that at the beginning of every quarter Mr. M'Ruen got nearly the half of his little modicum of salary, and that towards the middle of it he usually contrived to obtain an advance of some small, some very small sum, and that when doing so he always put his hand to a fresh bit of paper. He was beginning to be heartily sick of the bill-discounter. His intimacy with the lord had not yet commenced, nor had he experienced any of the delights which he had expected to accrue to him from the higher tone of extravagance in which he entered when he made Mr. M'Ruen's acquaintance. And then the horrid fatal waste of time which he incurred in pursuit of the few pounds which he occasionally obtained, filled even his heart with a sort of despair. Morning after morning he would wait in that hated room; and then day after day, at two o'clock, he would attend the usurer's city haunt--and generally all in vain. The patience of Mr. Snape was giving way, and the discipline even of the Internal Navigation felt itself outraged. And now Charley stood once more in that dingy little front parlour in which he had never yet seen a fire, and once more Mr. Jabesh M'Ruen shuffled into the room in his big cravat and dirty loose slippers.