price above mentioned, and at the end of the month the account stood thus: _s_. _d_. 21 rent-paid eggs at 1 ¾_d_. 3 0¾ Less food for fowl, at the rate of ½_d_. per day 1 3½ _______ Leaving a net profit of 1 9¼ This is a precise copy of the account made out by Timothy Chance, on the termination of the month; and with the figures, clear and well-shaped, before him, Timothy devoted himself to thought. His service with the seller of second-hand books had served him in good stead. He had rummaged out from among the stock at least a score of books treating of fowls and their produce, and he had studied them attentively. Some were old, one or two were of late years, and they all pointed to one fact--that money was to be made out of eggs. Most of the writers deplored the fact that the English people were so blind to their own interests as to systematically neglect a subject so fruitful. One of the treatises dealt in large figures--to wit, the population of Great Britain, and the number of eggs by them consumed annually; further, the number of eggs laid in the kingdom, and the number we were compelled to import to satisfy the demand, amounting not to scores but to hundreds of millions. Timothy's eyes dilated. One daring enthusiast went so far as to print pages of statistics to prove that if government took the affair in hand it could, in a certain number of years (number forgotten by the present chronicler), pay off the national debt. This, perhaps, was too extravagant, but the fact remained, and appeared incontrovertible, that money was to be made out of eggs. Here was plain proof--one shilling and ninepence farthing made out of one hen in a single month. "Let me see," mused Timothy, "how this turns out for a year." Down went the figures. _s_. _d_. Cost of good, 365 days at ½_d_ per day. . . . . 15 2½ Cost of fowl, say . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 0 ________ Total. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 2½ For a moment he forgot the rent, but he remembered it before he went into the credit side, and he reckoned it at a penny a week, which made the total expenses £1 2_s_. 6½_d_. Timothy was aware that he could not reckon upon an egg a day all through the year, but his reading-up on the subject, and the calculations he had made, convinced him that a fair-laying hen might be depended upon for two hundred and forty eggs during the three hundred and sixty-five days.