‘How far have you got?’

’What we’ve gone to work upon is a concession for making the line from the United States Congress.  We’re to have the land for nothing, of course, and a grant of one thousand acres round every station, the stations to be twenty-five miles apart.’

‘And the land is to be made over to you,—­when?’

‘When we have made the line up to the station.’  Fisker understood perfectly that Mr Melmotte did not ask the question in reference to any value that he might attach to the possession of such lands, but to the attractiveness of such a prospectus in the eyes of the outside world of speculators.

‘And what do you want me to do, Mr Fisker?’

‘I want to have your name...