“My dear boy,” he cried, “I can never forgive myself, and you can never forgive me.  Never mind:  I did it for the best.  And how nobly you clung on!  I dreaded we should have had to return the money at the doors.”

“It would have been more honest if we had,” said I.

The pressmen followed me, Harry Miller in the front ranks; and I was amazed to find them, on the whole, a pleasant set of lads, probably more sinned against than sinning, and even Harry Miller apparently a gentleman.  I had in oysters and champagne—­for the receipts were excellent—­and being in a high state of nervous tension, kept the table in a roar.  Indeed, I was never in my life so well inspired as when I described my vigil over Harry Miller’s literature or the series of my emotions as I faced the audience.  The lads vowed I was the soul of good company and the prince of lecturers; and—­so wonderful an institution is the popular press—­if you had seen the notices next day in all the papers, you must have supposed my evening’s entertainment an unqualified success.

I was in excellent spirits when I returned home that night, but the miserable Pinkerton sorrowed for us both.

“O, Loudon,” he said, “I shall never forgive myself.  When I saw you didn’t catch on to the idea of the lecture, I should have given it myself!”

CHAPTER VII.  IRONS IN THE FIRE.

Opes Strepitumque.

The food of the body differs not so greatly for the fool or the sage, the elephant or the cock-sparrow; and similar chemical elements, variously disguised, support all mortals.  A brief study of Pinkerton in his new setting convinced me of a kindred truth about that other and mental digestion, by which we extract what is called “fun for our money” out of life.  In the same spirit as a schoolboy, deep in Mayne Reid, handles a dummy gun and crawls among imaginary forests, Pinkerton sped through Kearney Street upon his daily business, representing to himself a highly coloured part in life’s performance, and happy for hours if he should have chanced to brush against a millionnaire.  Reality was his romance; he gloried to be thus engaged; he wallowed in his business.  Suppose a man to dig up a galleon on the Coromandel coast, his rakish schooner keeping the while an offing under easy sail, and he, by the blaze of a great fire of wreckwood, to measure ingots by the bucketful on the uproarious beach:  such an one might realise a greater material spoil; he should have no more profit of romance than Pinkerton when he cast up his weekly balance-sheet in a bald office.  Every dollar gained was like something brought ashore from a mysterious deep; every venture made was like a diver’s plunge; and as he thrust his bold hand into the plexus of the money-market, he was delightedly aware of how he shook the pillars of existence, turned out men (as at a battle-cry) to labour in far countries, and set the gold twitching in the drawers of millionnaires.