Yet it was a sorry home-coming, that put Harry painfully in mind of his last, and he felt very wistful and lonely when he had finished his supper and written a few lines to his mother. He came in from posting them with an ounce of birdseye, and dragged an easy chair from under its dust-sheet in the other room, and so arranged himself comfortably enough in front of the gas stove. But his first pipe for several weeks did no more for him than Weber's Last Waltz, which duly welcomed him through the ceiling. He was unused to solitude, and the morrow's interview with Lowndes sat heavily on his nerves. His one consolation was that it would take place before his mother's return. She must know nothing until he knew all. And he had begged her not to hurry back on his account. In the sideboard that was so many sizes too large for the room--the schoolroom sideboard of the old home--he at last laid hands upon some whisky, and in his loneliness and suppressed excitement he certainly drank more than was good for him before going to bed. Immense and immediate confidence accrued, only to evaporate before it was wanted; and morning found him nervous, depressed, and dearly wishing that he had gone hot from Scrafton to Lowndes the day before. But the bravest man is he who goes trembling and yet smiling into action, and, after all, it was a sufficiently determined face that Harry Ringrose carried through the sloppy City streets that foggy forenoon. In the outer office the same small clerk was perched on the same tall stool: but Bacchus sat solitary, in his top-coat and with a redder nose than ever, at the desk in the inner office, the door of which was standing open. "Good-morning, Mr. Backhouse," said Harry entering. "Mr. Lowndes is out?" "Very much out." "Doesn't he come here now?" "No." "I'm sorry to trouble you, Mr. Backhouse, but can you tell me where I can find him?" "Offices of the Crofter Fisheries." "Where are they?" "Hartington House, Cornhill." So brusque was his manner, so different from Harry's recollection of the red-nosed man, that the young fellow thanked him for his information with marked stiffness, whereupon the other sprang up and clapped on his hat. "I don't mean to be rude to you, Mr. Ringrose, but I'm sick of that man's name," cried he: "it gives me a thirst every time I hear it. Didn't you know about the Company? It comes out next week--they're going to have a solid page in every morning paper on Monday--capital one million, and everything but Royalty on the board! Lowndes has made himself General Manager with God knows how many thousand a year, and I was to be Secretary with five hundred. He promised it to me again and again--he had the use of these offices rent free for months--and used to borrow from the housekeeper when I had nothing--and now he gives it over my head to one of his aristocratic pals. I tell you, Mr. Ringrose, it makes me dry to think of it! Come and let me buy you a drink."