surveying the line. His brother directors were to be discovered nowhere:
Windham, Dodgin, Mizzlington, and the rest, were all gone long ago.

When I entered, the door was open: there was a smell of smoke in the
dining-room, where a gentleman at noonday was seated with a pipe and
a pot of beer: a man in possession indeed, in that comfortable pretty
parlor, by that snug round table where I have so often seen Fanny
Dixon's smiling face.

Kirby, the ex-dragoon, was scowling at the fellow, who lay upon a little
settee reading the newspaper, with an evident desire to kill him. Mrs.
Kirby, his wife, held little Danby, poor Dixon's son and heir. Dixon's
portrait smiled over the sideboard still, and his wife was up stairs
in an agony of fear, with the poor little daughters of this bankrupt,
broken family.

This poor soul had actually come down and paid a visit to the man in
possession. She had sent wine and dinner to "the gentleman down stairs,"
as she called him in her terror. She had tried to move his heart, by
representing to him how innocent Captain Dixon was, and how he had
always paid, and always remained at home when everybody else had fled.
As if her tears and simple tales and entreaties could move that man
in possession out of the house, or induce him to pay the costs of the
action which her husband had lost.

Danby meanwhile was at Boulogne, sickening after his wife and children.
They sold everything in his house--all his smart furniture and neat
little stock of plate; his wardrobe and his linen, "the property of a
gentleman gone abroad;" his carriage by the best maker; and his wine
selected without regard to expense. His house was shut up as completely