"By my faith, I forgot that!" replied Sharp; "a pretty good sign that, if you are a generous man, I am not a selfish one. We had better," he added, "let the claret alone till we return from Cockenzie. What think you?" Now Samuel had already told Sharp that he was to have no more of the wine; and the question of the attorney, which was a clear forestaller, would have angered any man who was not an heir (five minutes old) of ten thousand. But Samuel knew better than to quarrel with the attorney at that juncture; so he answered him in the affirmative; and, in five minutes afterwards, the heir and the lawyer were in a coach, driving off to Cockenzie. The bankrupt was, in a few minutes more, in a dream--the principal vision of which was himself in the act of paying his creditors in full with their own money, and earning a splendid reputation for honesty. The sooner he performed the glorious act, the greater credit he would secure by it; his name would be in the "Courant" and "Mercury," headed by the large letters--"Praiseworthy instance of honesty coming out, in full strength, from the ordeal of fire." "What has Miss Angelina M'Falzen been doing at the house of Mrs Bairnsfather?" cried Sharp, as he turned from the window of the carriage (now in the Canongate) to the face of Samuel, whose eyes were fixed by the charm of his glorious hallucination. "Lending her the 'Pilgrim's Progress!'" answered Samuel, as he started from his dream. Now Sharp could not for the life of him understand this ready answer of his friend, for he had put the query to awaken him from his dream, and without the slightest hope of receiving a reply to a question which savoured so much of the character of questions in general; so he left him to his dream, and, in a short time, they were at Cockenzie. CHAP. V.--THE TEA-PARTY. "Well, my dear," said Mr Bairnsfather to his wife, when he came home to tea on that same afternoon of which we have now been narrating the incidents, "I hope you are getting over our losses; yet I have no very good news for you to-day--for all that Thriven intends to offer of dividend is five shillings in the pound." "It is but a weary world this we live in," said the disconsolate wife. "We are all pilgrims; and there is for each of us some slough of despond, through which we must struggle to the happy valley." "What, ho!" rejoined the husband; "I have come home to tea, and you are giving me a piece of Bunyan. Come, lay down your book, for Mr Wrench and Mr Horner are to be here to get some of your souchong." "And I," replied the good-wife, "asked Miss Angelina M'Falzen to come back and get a cup with us. I could not do less to the devout creature; for she took the trouble of going to Mr Thriven's to-day, and getting from him the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' that she might bring it to me, to reconcile me to the evils of life, and, among the rest, the loss which we have sustained by her friend's failure."