doubt whether Mr. Merdle's wealth would be found to be as vast as had been supposed; whether there might not be a temporary difficulty in "realising" it; whether there might not even be a temporary suspension (say a month or so), on the part of the wonderful Bank. As the whispers became louder, which they did from that time every minute, they became more threatening. He had sprung from nothing, by no natural growth or process that any one could account for; he had been, after all, a low, ignorant fellow; he had been a down-looking man, and no one had ever been able to catch his eye; he had been taken up by all sorts of people, in quite an unaccountable manner; he had never had any money of his own, his ventures had been utterly reckless, and his expenditure had been most enormous. In steady progression, as the day declined, the talk rose in sound and purpose. He had left a letter at the Baths addressed to his physician, and his physician had got the letter, and the letter would be produced at the Inquest on the morrow, and it would fall like a thunderbolt upon the multitude he had deluded. Numbers of men in every profession and trade would be blighted by his insolvency; old people who had been in easy circumstances all their lives would have no place of repentance for their trust in him but the workhouse; legions of women and children would have their whole future desolated by the hand of this mighty scoundrel. Every partaker of his magnificent feasts would be seen to have been a sharer in the plunder of innumerable homes; every servile worshipper of riches who had helped to set him on his pedestal, would have done better to worship the Devil point-blank. So, the talk, lashed louder and higher by confirmation on confirmation, and by edition after edition of the evening papers, swelled into such a roar when night came, as might have brought one to believe that a solitary watcher on the gallery above the Dome of St. Paul's would have perceived the night air to be laden with a heavy muttering of the name of Merdle, coupled with every form of execration.

For, by that time it was known that the late Mr. Merdle's complaint had been, simply, Forgery and Robbery. He, the uncouth object of such wide-spread adulation, the sitter at great men's feasts, the roc's egg of great ladies' assemblies, the subduer of exclusiveness, the leveller of pride, the patron of patrons, the bargain-driver with a Minister for Lordships of the Circumlocution Office, the recipient of more acknowledgment within some ten or fifteen years, at most, than had been bestowed in England upon all peaceful public benefactors, and upon all the leaders of all the Arts and Sciences, with all their works to testify for them, during two centuries at least he, the shining wonder, the new constellation

to be followed by the wise men bringing gifts, until it stopped over certain carrion at the bottom of a bath and disappeared was simply the greatest Forger and the greatest Thief that ever cheated the gallows.

CHAPTER XXVI.

REAPING THE WHIRLWIND.

WITH a precursory sound of hurried breath and hurried feet, Mr. Pancks rushed into Arthur Clennam's Counting-house. The Inquest was over, the letter was public, the Bank was broken, the other model structures of straw had taken fire and were turned to smoke. The admired piratical ship had blown up, in the midst of a vast fleet of ships of all rates, and boats of all sizes; and on the deep was nothing but ruin: nothing but burning hulls, bursting magazines, great guns self-exploded tearing friends and neighbours to pieces, drowning men clinging to unseaworthy spars and going down every minute, spent swimmers, floating dead, and sharks.

The usual diligence and order of the Counting-house at the Works were overthrown. Unopened letters and unsorted papers lay strewn about the desk. In the midst of these tokens of prostrated energy and dismissed hope, the master of the Countinghouse stood idle in his usual place, with his arms crossed on the desk, and his head bowed down upon them.

Mr. Pancks rushed in and saw him, and stood still. In another minute, Mr. Pancks's arms were on the desk, and Mr. Pancks's head was bowed down upon them; and for some time they remained in these attitudes, idle and silent, with the width of the little room between them.

Mr. Pancks was the first to lift up his head and speak. "I persuaded you to it, Mr. Clennam. I know it. Say what you will. You can't say more to me than I say to myself. You can't say more than I deserve."

"O, Pancks, Pancks!" returned Clennam, "don't speak of deserving. What do I, myself, deserve!"

"Better luck," said Pancks.

"I," pursued Clennam, without attending to him, "who have ruined my partner! Pancks, Pancks, I have ruined Doyce! The honest, self-helpful, indefatigable old man, who has worked his way all through his life; the man who has contended against so much disappointment, and who has brought out of it such a good and hopeful nature; the man I have felt so much for, and meant

to be so true and useful to; I have ruined him — brought him to shame and disgrace - ruined him, ruined him!"

The agony into which the reflection wrought his mind was so distressing to see, that Mr. Pancks took hold of himself by the hair of his head, and tore it in desperation at the spectacle.

"Reproach me!" cried Pancks. "Reproach me, sir, or I'll do myself an injury. Say, You fool, you villain. Say, Ass, how could you do it, Beast, what did you mean by it! Catch hold of me somewhere. Say something abusive to me!" All the time, Mr. Pancks was tearing at his tough hair in a most pitiless and cruel manner.

"If you had never yielded to this fatal mania, Pancks," said Clennam, more in commiseration than retaliation, "it would have been how much better for you, and how much better for me!"

"At me again, sir!" cried Pancks, grinding his teeth in remorse. "At me again!”

"If you had never gone into those accursed calculations, and brought out your results with such abominable clearness," groaned Clennam, "it would have been how much better for you, Pancks, and how much better for me!"

"At me again, sir!" exclaimed Pancks, loosening his hold of his hair; "at me again, and again!"

Clennam, however, finding him already beginning to be pacified, had said all he wanted to say, and more. He wrung his hand, only adding, "Blind leaders of the blind, Pancks! Blind leaders of the blind! But Doyce, Doyce, Doyce; my injured partner!" That brought his head down on the desk once more.

Their former attitudes and their former silence were once more first encroached upon by Pancks.

"Not been to bed, sir, since it began to get about. Been high and low, on the chance of finding some hope of saving any cinders from the fire. All in vain. All gone. All vanished."

"I know it," returned Clennam, "too well."

Mr. Pancks filled up a pause with a groan that came out of the very depths of his soul.

Only yesterday, Pancks," said Arthur; "only yesterday, Monday, I had the fixed intention of selling, realising, and making an end of it."

"I can't say as much for myself, sir," returned Pancks. "Though it's wonderful how many people I've heard of, who were going to realise yesterday, of all days in the three hundred and sixty-five, if it hadn't been too late!"

His steam-like breathings, usually droll in their effect, were more tragic than so many groans; while, from head to foot, he was

in that begrimed, besmeared, neglected state, that he might have been an authentic portrait of Misfortune which could scarcely be discerned through its want of cleaning.

"Mr. Clennam, had you laid out — everything?"

He got over

the break before the last word, and also brought out the last word itself with great difficulty.

"Everything."

Mr. Pancks took hold of his tough hair again, and gave it such a wrench that he pulled out several prongs of it. After looking at these with an eye of wild hatred, he put them in his pocket. "My course," said Clennam, brushing away some tears that had been silently dropping down his face, "must be taken at once. What wretched amends I can make must be made. I must clear my unfortunate partner's reputation. I must retain nothing for myself. I must resign to our creditors the power of management I have so much abused, and I must work out as much of my fault or crime as is susceptible of being worked out, in the rest of

my days."

"Is it impossible, sir, to tide over the present?"

"Out of the question. Nothing can be tided over now, Pancks. The sooner the business can pass out of my hands, the better for it. There are engagements to be met, this week, which would bring the catastrophe before many days were over, even if I would postpone it for a single day, by going on for that space, secretly knowing what I know. All last night I thought of what I would do; what remains is to do it."

"Not entirely of yourself?" said Pancks, whose face was as damp as if his steam were turning into water as fast as he dismally blew it off. "Have some legal help.”

"Perhaps I had better."

"Have Rugg."

"There is not much to do. He will do it as well as another." "Shall I fetch Rugg, Mr. Clennam?"

"If you could spare the time. I should be much obliged to you." Mr. Pancks put on his hat that moment, and steamed away to Pentonville. While he was gone, Arthur never raised his head from the desk, but remained in that one position.

Mr. Pancks brought his friend and professional adviser Mr. Rugg back with him. Mr. Rugg had had such ample experience, on the road, of Mr. Pancks's being at that present in an irrational state of mind, that he opened his professional mediation by requesting that gentleman to take himself out of the way. Mr. Pancks, crushed and submissive, obeyed.

"He is not unlike what my daughter was, sir, when we began

the Breach of Promise action of Rugg and Bawkins, in which she was Plaintiff," said Mr. Rugg. "He takes too strong and direct an interest in the case. His feelings are worked upon. There is no getting on, in our profession, with feelings worked upon, sir."

As he pulled off his gloves and put them in his hat, he saw, in a side glance or two, that a great change had come over his client.

"I am sorry to perceive, sir," said Mr. Rugg, "that you have been allowing your own feelings to be worked upon. Now, pray don't, pray don't. These losses are much to be deplored, sir, but we must look 'em in the face."

"If the money I have sacrificed had been all my own, Mr. Rugg," sighed Clennam, "I should have cared far less."

"Indeed, sir?" said Mr. Rugg, rubbing his hands with a cheerful air. "You surprise me. That's singular, sir. I have generally found, in my experience, that it's their own money people are most particular about. I have seen people get rid of a good deal of other people's money, and bear it very well: very well indeed."

With these comforting remarks, Mr. Rugg seated himself on an office-stool at the desk and proceeded to business.

"Now, Mr. Clennam, by your leave, let us go into the matter. Let us see the state of the case. The question is simple. The question is the usual plain, straightforward, common-sense question. What can we do for ourself? What can we do for ourself?"

"That is not the question with me, Mr. Rugg," said Arthur. "You mistake it in the beginning. It is, what can I do for my partner, how can I best make reparation to him?"

I

"I am afraid, sir, do you know," argued Mr. Rugg persuasively, "that you are still allowing your feelings to be worked upon. don't like the term 'reparation,' sir, except as a lever in the hands of counsel. Will you excuse my saying that I feel it my duty to offer you the caution, that you really must not allow your feelings to be worked upon?"

"Mr. Rugg," said Clennam, nerving himself to go through with what he had resolved upon, and surprising that gentleman by appearing, in his despondency, to have a settled determination of purpose; "you give me the impression that you will not be much disposed to adopt the course I have made up my mind to take. If your disapproval of it should render you unwilling to discharge such business as it necessitates, I am sorry for it, and must seek other aid. But, I will represent to you at once, that to argue against it with me is useless."

"Good, sir," answered Mr. Rugg, shrugging his shoulders. "Good, sir. Since the business is to be done by some hands, let it be done