the railway advertisements. The time was so
well chosen, and the pin applied, that it was a
death-blow: shares declined from that morning
and the inevitable panic was advanced a week or
two. The more credulous speculators held on in
hopes of a revival; but Hardie, who knew that
the collapse had been merely hastened, saw the
gravity of the situation, and sold largely at a
heavy loss. But he could not sell all the bad
paper he had accumulated for a temporary
purpose: the panic came too swiftly, and too strong:
soon there were no buyers at any price. The
biter was bit: the fox who had said "this is a
trap; I'll lightly come and lightly go," was
caught by the light fantastic toe. In this
emergency he showed high qualities; vast financial
ability, great fortitude, and that sense of
commercial honour, which Mrs. Dodd justly called
his semi-chivalrous sentiment. He mustered all
his private resources to meet his engagements,
and maintain his high position.

Then commenced a long and steady struggle,
conducted with a Spartan dignity and self-command,
and a countenance as close as wax. Little
did any he in Barkington guess the doubts and
fears, the hopes and despondencies, which
agitated and tore the heart and brain that
schemed, and throbbed, and glowed, and sickened
by turns, beneath that steady modulated
exterior. And so for months and months he secretly
battled with insolvency; sometimes it threatened
in the distance, sometimes at hand, but never
caught him unawares; he provided for each
coming danger, he encountered each immediate
attack.

But not unscathed in morals. Just as matters
looked brighter, came a concentration of liabilities
he could not meet without emptying his tills,
and so incurring the most frightful danger of all.
He had provided for its coming, too; but a
decline, greater than he had reckoned on, in the
value of his good securities, made that provision
inadequate. Then it was he committed a faux
pas. He was one of his own children's trustees;
and the other two signed after him like machines.
He said to himself: "My honour is my children's;
my position is worth thousands to them. I have
sacrificed a fortune to preserve it; it would be
madness to recoil now."

He borrowed three thousand pounds of the
trust money, and, soon after, two thousand more:
it kept him above water; but the peril, and the
escape on such terms, left him gasping inwardly.

At last, when even his granite nature was
almost worn down with labour, anxiety, and
struggling all alone without a word of comfort
—for the price of one grain of sympathy would
have been "Destruction"—he shuffled off his iron
burden, and breathed again.

One day he spent in a sort of pleasing lethargy,
like a strong swimmer who, long and sore buffeted
by the waves, has reached the shore at last.

The next day his cashier, a sharp-visaged,
bald-headed old man called young Skinner, invited his
attention rather significantly to the high amount
of certain balances compared with the cash at
his (Skinner's) disposal.

"Indeed!" said Hardie, quietly; "that must
be regulated." He added graciously, as if
conferring a great favour, "I'll look into the books
myself, Skinner."

He did more; he sat up all night over the
books; and his heart died within him.
Bankruptcy seemed coming towards him, slow perhaps,
but sure. And meantime to live with the sword
hanging over him by a hair!

Soon matters approached a crisis; several
large drafts were drawn, which would have
cleaned the bank out, but that the yearly rents
of a wealthy nobleman had for some days past
been flowing in.

This nobleman had gone to explore Syria and
Assyria. He was a great traveller, who
contrived to live up to his income at home, but had
never been able to spend a quarter of it abroad,
for want of enemies and masters—better known
as friends and servants—to help him. So Hardie
was safe for some months, unless there should
be an extraordinary run on him, and that was
not likely this year; the panic had subsided, and,
nota bene, his credit had never stood higher.
The reason was, he had been double-faced; had
always spoken against railways: and his wise
words were public, whereas his fatal acts had
been done in the dark.

And now came a change, a bitter revulsion,
over this tossed mind; hope and patience failed
at last, and his virtue, being a thing of habit and
traditions, rather than of the soul, wore out;
nay more, this man, who had sacrificed so nobly
to commercial integrity, filled with hate of his
idol, and contempt of himself. "Idiot!" said
he, "to throw away a fortune fighting for honour,
—a greater bubble than that which has ruined
me—instead of breaking like a man, with a
hidden purse, and starting fair again as sensible
traders do."

No honest man in the country that year
repented of his vices so sincerely as Richard
Hardie loathed his virtue. And he did not
confine his penitence to sentiment; he began to
spend his days at the bank poring over the books,
and to lay out his arithmetical genius in a subtle
process, that should enable him by degrees to
withdraw a few thousands from human eyes for
his future use, despite the feeble safeguards of
the existing law. In other words Richard
Hardie, like thousands before him, was
fabricating and maturing a false balance sheet.

One man in his time plays many animals.
Hardie, at this period, turned mole. He
burrowed darkling into æs alienum. There is
often one of these sleek miners in a Bank: it is
a section of human zoology the journals have
lately enlarged on, and drawn the painstaking
creature grubbing and mining away to brief
opulence; and briefer penal servitude than one
could wish. I rely on my reader having read
these really able sketches of my contemporaries;
and spare him minute details, that possess