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358 a pity that such a sum should be lying about, as it were, within reach, and that he should not stoop to put his hands upon it. Such abstinence would be so contrary to all the practice of his life that it was as difficult to him as it is for a sportsman to let pass a cock-pheasant. But yet something like remorse touched his heart as he sat there balancing himself on his chair in the private secretary's room, and looking at the young man's open face.

"Yes, I'll write to him," said John Robarts; "but he hasn't said any thing to me about any thing particular."

"Hasn't he? It does not much signify. I only mentioned it because I thought I understood him to say that he would." And then Mr. Sowerby went on swinging himself. How was it that he felt so averse to mention that little sum of £500 to a young man like John Robarts, a fellow without wife or children, or calls on him of any sort, who would not even be injured by the loss of the money, seeing that he had an ample salary on which to live? He wondered at his own weakness. The want of the money was urgent on him in the extreme. He had reasons for supposing that Mark would find it very difficult to renew the bills, but he, Sowerby, could stop their presentation if he could get this money at once into his own hands.

"Can I do any thing for you?" said the innocent lamb, offering his throat to the butcher.

But some unwonted feeling numbed the butcher's fingers and blunted his knife. He sat still for half a minute after the question, and then jumping from his seat, declined the offer. "No, no, nothing, thank you. Only write to Mark, and say that I shall be there to-morrow;" and then, taking his hat, he hurried out of the office. "What an ass I am," he said to himself as he went; "as if it were of any use now to be particular!"

He then got into a cab and had himself driven half way up Portman Street toward the New Road, and walking from thence a few hundred yards down a cross street, he came to a public house. It was called the "Goat and Compasses"—a very meaningless name, one would say; but the house boasted of being a place of public entertainment very long established on that site, having been a tavern out in the country in the days of Cromwell. At that time the pious landlord, putting up a pious legend for the