smiled.
“What is your commission on all the shares you place?”
“Precious little. Eh? Oh, I see; you think I want to plant a few. Not likely. If you wanted a hundred, I couldn’t get them for you.”
“No, they never are to be had.”
“Chaff away. I don’t care. You know it’s a good thing, or else our governor wouldn’t have put his name to it and set so much money as he has.”
“To come up and bear a good crop, eh? There, I won’t chaff about it, Jessop, boy. I know it’s a good thing, and you ought to make a rare swag out of it.”
“So that you could too, eh?”
“Of course; so that we could both make a good thing out of it. One is not above making a few thou’s, I can tell you. Lead, isn’t it?”
“Yes, solid lead. None of your confounded flashy gold-mines.”
“But they sound well with the public, Jessop. Gold – gold – gold. The public is not a Bassanio, to choose the lead casket.”
“It was a trump ace, though, my boy.”
“So it was. But you are only to get a little commission out of sales over this, eh?”
“That’s all; and it isn’t worth the candle, for there’ll be no more to sell. The shares are going up tremendously.”
“So I hear – so I hear,” said Wrigley thoughtfully; “and you are left out in the cold, and have to come borrowing. Jessop, old man, over business matters you and I are business men, and there is, as the saying goes, no friendship in business.”
“Not a bit,” said Jessop, with an oath.
“But we are old friends, and we have seen a little life together.”
“Ah! we have,” said Jessop, nodding his head.
“And, as the world goes, I think we have a little kind of pleasant feeling one for the other.”
“Humph! I suppose so,” said Jessop, watching the other narrowly with the keen eye of a man who deals in hard cash, and knows the value of a sixteenth per cent, in a large transaction. “Well, what’s up?”
“I was thinking, my dear fellow,” said the young lawyer, in a low voice, “how much pleasanter the world would be for you and me if we were rich. But no, no, no. You would not care to fight against your father and brother.”
“Perhaps before long there will only be my brother to fight against,” said Jessop meaningly.
The lawyer looked at him keenly.
“You should not say that without a good reason, Jessop.”
“No, I should not.”
“Well, I don’t ask for your confidence, so let it slide. It was tempting; but there is your brother.”
“Curse my brother!” cried Jessop savagely. “Is he always to stand in my light?”
“That rests with you.”
“Look here, what do you mean?”
“Do you wish me to state what I mean?”
“Yes,” said Jessop excitedly.
“Then I meant this. Your father is very rich, and knows how to protect his interests.”
“Trust him for that.”
“Your brother is well provided for, and can make his way.”
“Oh, hang him, yes. Fortune’s favourite, and no mistake.”
“Then what would you say if – But one moment. You tell me, as man to man, to whom the business would be vital, that the ‘White Virgin’ mine is really a big thing?”
“I tell you, as man to man, that it will be a tremendously big thing.”
“Good!” said the lawyer slowly, and in a low voice. “Then what would you say if I put you in the way of making a few hundred thousand pounds?”
“And yourself too?”
“Of course.”
“Then never mind what I should say. Can you do it?”
“Yes. You and I are about the only two men who could work that affair rightly; and as the whole business is to others a speculation, if they lose – well, they have gambled, and must take their chance.”
“Of course. But – speak out.”
“No, not out, Jessop; we must not so much as whisper. I have that affair under my thumb, and there is a fortune in it for us – the stockbroker and the lawyer. Shall we make a contract of it, hand in hand?”
“Tell me one thing first – it sounds impossible. What would you do?”
“Simply this,” said Wrigley, with a smile. “I tell you because you will not go back, neither could I. There’s my hand on it.”
Jessop eagerly grasped the extended hand.
“It means being loss to thousands – fortune to two.”
“Us two?” said Jessop hoarsely.
“Exactly! It is in a nutshell, my boy. All is fair in love, in war, and money-making, eh? Here is my plan.”
Chapter Three.
Another
“Come, I say, my dear, what’s the good of being so stand-offish. It’s very nice and pretty, and makes a man fonder of you, and that’s why you do it, I know! I say! I didn’t know that the pretty Derbyshire lasses in this out-of-the-way place were as coy and full of their little games as our London girls.” Out-of-the-way place indeed! Dinah Gurdon knew that well enough, as, with her teeth set fast and her eyes dilated, she hurried along that afternoon over the mountain-side. The path was an old track, which had been made hundreds of years before, so that ponies could drag the little trucks up and down, and in and out, but always lower and lower to the smelting-house down in the dale, a mere crack in the limestone far below, whose perpendicular jagged walls were draped with ivy, and at whose foot rushed along the clear crystal trout-river, which brought a stranger into those solitudes once in a way. But not on this particular afternoon, for Dinah looked vainly for some tweed-clothed gentleman with lithe rod over his shoulder and fishing-creel slung on back, to whom she could appeal for protection from the man who followed her so closely behind on the narrow, shelf-like path.
Two miles at least to go yet to the solitary nook in the hills just above the bend in the stream, where the pretty, romantic, flower-clothed cottage stood; and where only, as far as she knew, help could be found. And at last, feeling that she must depend entirely upon herself for protection, she drew her breath hard, and mastered the strong desire within her to cry aloud and run along the stony track as fast as her strength would allow.
But she only walked fast, with her sunburned, ungloved fingers tightly holding her basket, her face hidden by her close
