shillings, and were paid it cheerfully. Another sovereign was added to
each case of what remained on Wednesday, and the seventy shillings was
put down without a murmur. How much farther the bidding would have gone
will never be known, for a vicious little bird must needs tell the
Colonel all about it. That gentleman happened to be engaged in his
favourite (proclaiming) pastime; he sat ruminating on the high price of
coal, and evolving schemes to bring wood back to its proper level. The
latter article was what the poorer classes used as fuel. The Colonel had
no scruples about dotting down a reasonable figure for coal; but wood
was new to him; he sympathised with the woodman, yet could not spare the
tree. Water (sold in casks) had evinced propensities to bubble over, and
to prevent consequent waste it was necessary to make it simmer down to
its normal tepidity. Having settled these little difficulties, the
worried autocrat was about to affix his signature to the magic
manuscript, when the little feathered informer alighted on his shoulder
and warbled "_wacht-een-beitje_, what price oil?" The Colonel had no
hesitation in pouring it on troubled waters, by making eighteen
shillings the maximum charge per case.

What the feelings of the syndicate were is not recorded. There was only
one thing certain, the deal was not a profitable thing--for the
_buyers_. Rumour had it that one gentleman, "with a pigtail," had paid
fifty shillings each for two hundred cases. The story was false--rumour
is never quite right; the man wore no pigtail. A Celestial speculator
indeed he was, but he had long since discarded, if he had ever sported,
his national plait.

The afternoon brought a fight--a fight at last. Nothing less sensational
could explain the wave of excitement that set men, women, and children
struggling in a wild scramble for the debris heaps, which commanded a