The jury found for the plaintiff, Alfred Hardie, and gave the damages at £3,000. The verdict was received with acclamation by the people, and in the midst of this Alfred's lawyer announced that the plaintiff had just gained his first class at Oxford. Mr. Richard Hardie restored the £14,000, and a few years later died a monomaniac, believing himself penniless when he possessed £60,000. Alfred married Julia, and, with the consent of his wife, took his father to live with them. Then Alfred determined to pay in full all who had been ruined by the bank failure, and in time the old bank was reopened with Edward Dodd as managing partner. In the end, no creditor of Richard Hardie was left unpaid. Alfred went in for politics and became an M.P. for Barkington; whence to dislodge him I pity anyone who tries. * * * * * It Is Never Too Late to Mend "It is Never Too Late to Mend, a Matter-of-Fact Romance," published in 1856, is, like "Hard Cash," a story with a purpose, the object in this instance being to illustrate the abuses of prison discipline in England and Australia. Many of the passages describing Australian life are exceptionally vivid and imaginative, and exhibit Charles Reade, if not in the front rank of novelists of his day, at least occupying a high position. _I.--In Berkshire_ George Fielding, assisted by his brother William, tilled The Grove--as nasty a little farm as any in Berkshire. It was four hundred acres, all arable, and most of it poor, sour land. A bad bargain, and the farmer being sober, intelligent, proud, sensitive, and unlucky, is the more to be pitied. Susanna Merton was beautiful and good; George Fielding and she were acknowledged lovers, but latterly old Merton had seemed cool whenever his daughter mentioned the young man's name. William Fielding, George's brother, was in love with his brother's sweetheart, but he never looked at her except by stealth; he knew he had no business to love her. While George Fielding had been going steadily down-hill, till even the bank declined to give him credit, Mr. Meadows, who had been a carter, was, at forty years of age, a rich corn-factor and land surveyor. This John Meadows was not a common man. He had a cool head, and an iron will; and he had the soul of business--method. Meadows was generally respected; by none more than by old Merton. In fact, it seemed to Merton that John Meadows would make a better son-in-law than George Fielding. The day came when a distress was issued against Fielding's farm for the rent, and as it happened on that very day Susan and her father had come to dinner at The Grove. Old Merton, knowing how things stood, spoke his mind to George. "You are too much of a man, I hope, to eat a woman's bread; and if you are not, I am man enough to keep the girl from it. If Susan marries you she will have to keep you instead of you her."