Accordingly, our prospectus appeared one
morning at full length in all the papers, as did
also a notice in the money article of the leading
journals, telling the public that "A new
scheme, called the Grand Financial and Credit
Bank of Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and
Australia, had been brought out with a nominal
capital of one million," and that "the direction
was highly respectable."

Were the applications for shares numerous?
At first they were not, but a day or two after our
prospectus was launched, friends of Mr. May's
were sent upon the Stock Exchange to "rig the
market." Thus, some gentleman not worth a
ten-pound note in the world, would obtain an
introduction to a respectable stockbroker, and
would tell him (in confidence, of course) that
he wanted to sell a hundred shares in the
"Grand Financial," but would not do so at
less than two, or two and a half, premium,
because he was sure of having a certain
number allotted him, and he knew well that the
number applied for already, exceeded the
number to be allotted in the proportion of three to
one. In the mean time, another friend would
go to another stockbroker, and say that he
wanted to buy so many shares of the new bank,
and would go as high as two, or two and a half,
premium for them. Thus bargains—mere
shams, of course—were made at this price,
were quoted in the "money articles" (though
not in the authorised lists), the public read
them, were anxious to make money, thought
that even if they got but a few shares it
would be money easily made, and so came
forward with a rush to apply for shares. In ten
days, all our ten thousand shares were
applied for, and before another week was over
that number was nearly doubled. The directors
wisely struck while the iron was hot, and
proceeded at once to allot the shares. Mr. May
got a cheque for his five thousand pounds of
promotion money; the different directors got
their respective "pulls" out of the concern;
the advertising agent made his three hundred
per cent profit; and so the bank floated.

How the affair worked—how it went on very
well at first, then got shaky, and, finally, came
to most unmitigated grief—may form the
subject of a future paper.

FOR LIFE OR DEATH.

"SENOR INGLESE, a young lady renders a
visit to your grace," said fat Juan the waiter,
throwing the door wide for the visitor's
admission. I was sitting in the window of my little
room on the third floor of the Fonda de l'Ala-meda,
looking down upon the darkling promenade
where the lighted cigar-tips were beginning
to twinkle among the fountains and marble
statues, and where the beaux and belles of
Malaga, with fan and rustling mantilla, and
jingling spurs, were passing and repassing in
endless groups, full of mirth and gossip. As
for myself, I was heartily tired. We had had
a long day's work in getting the cargo on
board, and I was fairly worn out with the
toil of encouraging the lazy stevedores and
disputing with the harpies of the Spanish
custom-house. But the good ship Tudor, of Bristol,
to which I belonged, in the capacity of first
mate, had to be freighted as speedily as possible
for the homeward voyage, and, as Captain
Meiklejohn was getting frail and old, most of
the responsibility devolved upon myself. Nor
did I grudge it, the rather that Price and
Thompson, our owners, had as good as promised
that when the Tudor next sailed away out of
sight of the tower of St. Mary Redcliffe, Henry
West should command her, vice Meiklejohn,
retired on a pension. And then——

But as my thoughts were busy with the
daydreams which fancy had conjured up with
reference to what I should be able to do with the
increased salary and higher position of captain,
day-dreams in which the sweet little face and
soft brown eyes of Alice Croft were inextricably
mixed up with visions of a snug English home
at Clifton, with happy children at play in its
garden, and a loving welcome back for the
husband and father when he should return from
sea, Juan the waiter flung the door open exactly
as I have described. And Alice Croft herself,
with her poor little pretty face very white and
tear-stained, came hastily in, while in the
passage without I caught a glimpse of the wrinkled
ugliness of old Seraphina, the old crone who
was the Crofts' only servant.

"Alice, darling! You here? What is the
matter?" said I, springing from my chair; and
in a moment the poor little lonely English girl
was weeping on my shoulder. It was not for
some moments that I could succeed in calming
her agitation sufficiently to draw from her a
coherent account of the misfortune that had
occurred, though I easily guessed that no
trifling cause would have induced a girl so
modest and strictly brought up as my dear
Alice to enter the crowded and bustling Spanish
hotel for the purpose of visiting a bachelor
inmate of the Fonda. But at first Alice could
say no more, through her sobs, than the words,
"My father, my dear father!" and these led me
vaguely to conclude that some accident had
happened to old Mr. Croft, though of what
nature I could not guess.

Old Mr. Croft was one of the few English,
excepting the invalids whom the warm winter
climate had at that time begun to attract,
resident in Malaga. He was a widower, and Alice
was his only child, and about nineteen years of
age. Her father had married late in life, and
on this account, perhaps, and for the sake of the
wife, to whom he had been tenderly attached,
and who had died when Alice was still very
young, he was unusually wrapped up in his
daughter, of whom he was excessively proud
and fond. He was, indeed, of rather a proud
and reserved nature, and disposed at times to
speak and think with bitterness of a world by
which he considered himself to have been
unjustly used. His past history I never thoroughly