“MY DEAR NED,—­Since you wish it, come down here for a few weeks; whether to recruit your health or your finances matters not.  Mountain air and plain living are good for both.  However, I warn you beforehand that you will find us very dull.  Lady B.’s health is hardly what it ought to be, and we are seeing no company just now.  If you like to take us as we are, I say again—­come.

“As for the last paragraph of your letter, I scarcely know in what terms to answer it.  You have already bled me so often the same way, that I have grown heartily sick of the process.  This must be the last time of asking, my boy; I wish you clearly to understand that.  This place has cost me a great deal of money of late, and I cannot spring you more than a hundred.  For that amount I enclose you a cheque.  Finis coronat opus.  Bear those words in mind, and believe me when I say that you have had your last cheque

“From your affectionate cousin,
“BARNSTAKE.”

“Consummate little prig!” murmured Captain Ducie to himself as he refolded the letter and put it away.  “I can fancy the smirk on his face as he penned that precious effusion, and how, when he had finished it, he would trot off to his clothes-prop of a wife and ask her whether she did not think it at once amusing and severe.  That letter shall cost your lordship fifty guineas, I don’t allow people to write to me in that style with impunity.”

He lighted another cigar frowningly.  “I wonder if I was ever so really hard up as I am now?” he continued to himself.  “I don’t think I ever was quite.  I have been in Queer Street many a time, but I’ve always found a friend round the corner, or have pulled myself through by the skin of the teeth somehow.  But this time I see no lift in the cloud.  My insolvency has become chronic; it is attacking the very citadel of life.  I have not a single uncle or aunt to fall back upon.  The poor creatures are all dead and buried, and their money all spent.  Well!—­Outlaw is an ugly word, but it is one that I shall have to learn how to spell before long.  I shall have to leave my country for my country’s good.”

He puffed away fiercely for a little while, and then he resumed.

“It would not be a bad thing for a fellow like me to become a chief among the Red Skins—­if they would have me.  With them my lack of pence would be no bar to success.  I can swim and shoot and ride:  although I cannot paint a picture, I daresay that I could paint myself; and I know several fellows whose scalps I should have much pleasure in taking.  As for the so-called amenities of civilized life, what are they worth to one who, like me, has no longer the means of enjoying them?  After all, it is a question whether freedom and the prairie would not be preferable to Pall-Mall and a limited income of, say—­twelve hundred a year—­the sort of income that is just enough to make one the slave of society, but is not sufficient to pay for gilding its fetters.  A station, by Jove! and with it the possibility of getting a drop of cognac.”