what is your due. I think that the maist feck of what people ca' Political Economy is havers; but one truth cannot be denied, and that is that capital is the accumulation of labour. It matters not whether your grandfather, or your father, or you, have laboured for the capital; but it's yours, and if ye let it slip, and pass into the hands of a swindler, is it not plain that you surrender and sacrifice, if I may so speak, the toil of those who have gane before ye; and are ye no answerable, in a measure, for all the pinchings they have made to benefit the next generation? And now I hae done. Gudesake! I wish Lord Brougham had heard me. Maybe he might have wafted me into a chair of Political Economy, where naebody could contradict my doctrine!"

"I can assure you, Davie, if you were always to speak as sensibly as you have now spoken, you would be esteemed a most admirable professor."

"Weel; be that as it may, dinna you be blate. I'm no expecting that the storm will burst for a while yet, but there are kittle signs in the weather-glass; and it's aye a wise thing to put the corn under thack and rape sae lang as the lift is clear."

Honest Davie left me, I confess, rather in a state of perturbation. I knew him to be a shrewd fellow, well able to form a just conclusion from what he saw going on around him; and my own knowledge of the extent of the liabilities undertaken by the directors of the lines in question was sufficient to convince me that any sudden check or panic in the market must lead to

disastrous consequences. My breakfast, therefore, was a very uncomfortable one; and no sooner was it over than I sallied forth in quest of my adviser, Mr Shearaway. He had left his hotel, with an intimation that he would not return till evening. I then went in search of Ewins, thinking it probable that the acute Yankee might have picked up some information that might be useful; but the descendant of Macbeth had gone to the city, and doubtless by this time was in deep colloquy with the bulls and bears. So I had nothing for it but to return to my apartment, and apply myself to the preparation of a leader, which I suspect was not much more cheerful in its tone than a page of the Sorrows of Werther.

CHAPTER XII.

MY COUSIN.

LORD and Lady Windermere had continued to extend to me very marked and thoughtful kindness, and I had a card that evening for one of the countess's receptions. I had not mingled very much in society; being, to say the truth, somewhat indifferent to its charms, partly from a sort of shyness which was constitutional, and partly because I felt it a sort of hypocrisy to enact the character of an idler. But an invitation to the Windermeres was not to be lightly regarded, or in anywise passed over; so I went there in pretty much the same spirit as that in which a bashful country member presents himself for the first time at a Royal levée.

The company at Lady Windermere's receptions was rather select than numerous, for she had a horror of lionising-that is, of crowding her drawing-room with celebrities, diplomatic, literary, or otherwise; a practice which is resorted to by some great people, by way of showing that they are in no wise insensible to the claims of genius. Few were invited save those who

were connected either by family ties, or those of political association, recognised eminence, or otherwise friendship and esteem; consequently the reunions were voted to be tiresome by people to whom excitement had become a necessary condition of existence, but highly prized by those of more sober and intellectual tastes. There it certainly was not to be anticipated that you would meet without fail the utterer of the last flashy speech in Parliament-the distinguished patriotic refugee upon whose head foreign governments had set a price-the preacher whose eloquent neology was attracting thousands of professed orthodox Christians to his chapel-the writer of the recent pamphlet that had fallen like a bomb-shell into the Cabinet-or the author of that charming novel which everybody was bound to read. But you were sure to find people of sense, intellect, cultivation, established fame, and high unblemished character; and beyond that, surely, there was very little to be desired.

After I had made my bow to Lady Windermere, the first person I recognised in the saloon was Mr Lumley, whose acquaintance I had made at Wilbury. From what I had seen of him there I liked him very much, for beneath the mask of apathy he concealed much quiet humour and good feeling, and he was, moreover, thoroughly in all respects a gentleman. He greeted me very cordially, and began to talk over the events which had occurred when we met in the country at Christmas.

"I have sad tidings to give you," said he, "of your

fair friend, Miss Bootle, who, you may remember, made such a decided set at you on the subject of the Jesuits. Heaven knows what had possessed the excellent old lady; but she took it into her head, after you had left, that you were a member of the order, and absolutely quarrelled with Dr Wayles, who, regarding you as an excellent specimen of the antique Scotch nonjuror for you gained his heart by a eulogy on the seven bishops-maintained that you were a second Spinckes.. But when the poacher story got wind, Miss Bootle's suspicions became convictions; and in order that she might thoroughly escape from a world, which, in her diseased imagination, is thickly planted with Jesuitical traps, she has entered an Agapemone, or Home of Love, to which she has conveyed not only her esteemed person, but some fifteen thousand pounds invested in consols, whereunto, according to the rules of genealogy and representation, I ought to succeed; failing heirs of her body, which contingency would be miraculous, as she has nearly attained to the respectable antiquity of Sarah."

"I do hope, Mr Lumley, that I was not the cause, however innocent, of such a catastrophe."

"Most assuredly not: I acquit you entirely. The agent was a red-haired foxy fellow, who had been lurking in the neighbourhood under the pretext of collecting subscriptions for a Patagonian mission. It is wonderful what interest ladies of a certain age will take in savages that are seven feet high! They don't seem to care so much about pigmies. But I really want to know something about that surveyor whom we