and receive the price of sharp practice. In other words he, Alan Vernon,
who had never uttered a wilful untruth or taken a halfpenny that was not
his own, would before the tribunal of his own mind, stand convicted as
a liar and a thief. The thing was not to be borne. At whatever cost it
must be ended. If he were fated to be a beggar, at least he would be an
honest beggar.

With a firm step and a high head he walked straight into Sir Robert's
room, without even going through the formality of knocking, to find
Mr. Champers-Haswell seated at the ebony desk by his partner's
side examining some document through a reading-glass, which on his
appearance, was folded over and presently thrust away into a drawer.
It seemed, Alan noticed, to be of an unusual shape and written in some
strange character.

Mr. Haswell, a stout, jovial-looking, little man with a florid
complexion and white hair, rose at once to greet him.

"How do you do, Alan," he said in a cheerful voice, for as a cousin by
marriage he called him by his Christian name. "I am just this minute
back from Paris, and you will be glad to learn that they are going to
support us very well there; in fact I may say that the Government has
taken up the scheme, of course under the rose. You know the French have
possessions all along that coast and they won't be sorry to find
an opportunity of stretching out their hand a little further. Our
difficulties as to capital are at an end, for a full third of it is
guaranteed in Paris, and I expect that small investors and speculators
for the rise will gobble a lot more. We shall plant £10,000,000 worth of
Sahara scrip in sunny France, my boy, and foggy England has underwritten
the rest. It will be a case of 'letters of Allotment and regret,' _and_