Mr. Saltram was a barrister, almost a briefless one at present, for his
habits were desultory, not to say idle, and he had not taken very kindly
to the slow drudgery of the Bar. He had some money of his own, and added
to his income by writing for the press in a powerful trenchant manner,
with a style that was like the stroke of a sledge-hammer. In spite of
this literary work, for which he got very well paid, Mr. Saltram
generally contrived to be in debt; and there were few periods of his life
in which he was not engaged more or less in the delicate operation of
raising money by bills of accommodation. Habit had given him quite an
artistic touch for this kind of thing, and he did his work fondly, like
some enthusiastic horticulturist who gives his anxious days to the
budding forth of some new orchid or the production of a hitherto
unobtainable tulip. It is doubtful whether money procured from any other
source was ever half so sweet to this gentleman as the cash for which he
paid sixty per cent to the Jews. With these proclivities he managed to
rub on from year to year somehow, getting about five hundred per annum in
solid value out of an income of seven, and adding a little annually to
the rolling mass of debt which he had begun to accumulate while he was at
Balliol.

"Why, Jack," cried Gilbert, starting up from his reverie at the entrance
of his friend, and greeting him with a hearty handshaking, "this is an
agreeable surprise! I was asking for you at the Pnyx last night, and Joe
Hawdon told me you were away--up the Danube he thought, on a canoe
expedition."

"It is only under some utterly impossible dispensation that Joseph Hawdon
will ever be right about anything. I have been on a walking expedition in
Brittany, dear boy, alone, and have found myself very bad company. I
started soon after you went to your sister's, and only came back last