“Your friend placed her money in your name; and you, if I mistake not, Mr. Titmarsh, were suddenly placed over the heads of twelve of your fellow-clerks as a reward for your service in obtaining it?”

“It is very true, sir,”—­and, as I confessed it, poor Mary began to wipe her eyes, and Gus’s ears (I could not see his face) looked like two red-hot muffins—­“it’s quite true, sir; and, as matters have turned out, I am heartily sorry for what I did.  But at the time I thought I could serve my aunt as well as myself; and you must remember, then, how high our shares were.”

“Well, sir, having procured this sum of money, you were straightway taken into Mr. Brough’s confidence.  You were received into his house, and from third clerk speedily became head clerk; in which post you were found at the disappearance of your worthy patron!”

“Sir, you have no right to question me, to be sure; but here are a hundred of our shareholders, and I’m not unwilling to make a clean breast of it,” said I, pressing Mary’s hand.  “I certainly was the head clerk.  And why?  Because the other gents left the office.  I certainly was received into Mr. Brough’s house.  And why?  Because, sir, my aunt had more money to lay out.  I see it all clearly now, though I could not understand it then; and the proof that Mr. Brough wanted my aunt’s money, and not me, is that, when she came to town, our Director carried her by force out of my house to Fulham, and never so much as thought of asking me or my wife thither.  Ay, sir, and he would have had her remaining money, had not her lawyer from the country prevented her disposing of it.  Before the concern finally broke, and as soon as she heard there was doubt concerning it, she took back her shares—­scrip shares they were, sir, as you know—­and has disposed of them as she thought fit.  Here, sir, and gents,” says I, “you have the whole of the history as far as regards me.  In order to get her only son a means of livelihood, my mother placed her little money with the Company—­it is lost.  My aunt invested larger sums with it, which were to have been mine one day, and they are lost too; and here am I, at the end of four years, a disgraced and ruined man.  Is there anyone present, however much he has suffered by the failure of the Company, that has had worse fortune through it than I?”

“Mr. Titmarsh,” says Mr. Commissioner, in a much more friendly way, and at the same time casting a glance at a newspaper reporter that was sitting hard by, “your story is not likely to get into the newspapers; for, as you say, it is a private affair, which you had no need to speak of unless you thought proper, and may be considered as a confidential conversation between us and the other gentlemen here.  But if it could be made public, it might do some good, and warn people, if they will be warned, against the folly of such enterprises as that in which you have been engaged.  It is quite clear from your story, that you have been