properer figure of a man, nor one better clad, when I shall have done
with you, sir."

Law but half heard him, for he was already turning toward the door,
where he beckoned again for his waiting chair.

"To the offices of the Bank of England," he directed. And forthwith he
was again jogging through the crowded streets of London.

The offices of the Bank of England, to which this young adventurer now
so nonchalantly directed his course, were then not housed in any such
stately edifice as that which now covers the heart of the financial
world, nor did the location of the young and struggling institution, in
a by-street of the great city, tend to give dignity to a concern which
still lacked importance and assuredness. Thither, then, might have gone
almost any young traveler who needed a letter of credit cashed, or a
bill changed after the fashion of the passing goldsmiths.

Yet it was not as mere transient customer of a money-changer that young
Law now sought the Bank of England, nor was it as a commercial house
that the bank then commanded attention. That bank, young as it was, had
already become a pillar of the throne of England. William, distracted by
wars abroad and factions at home, found his demands for funds ever in
excess of the supply. More than that, the people of England discovered
themselves in possession of a currency fluctuating, mutilated, and
unstable, so that no man knew what was his actual fortune. The shrewd
young financier, Montague, chancellor of the exchequer, who either by
wisdom or good fortune had sanctioned the founding of the Bank of
England, was at this very time addressing himself to the question of a
recoinage of the specie of the realm of England. He needed help, he