England in the wake of the _Proserpine,_ and about two thousand miles
astern.



CHAPTER VIII.

WARDLAW was at home before this with his hands full of business; and it
is time the reader should be let into one secret at least, which this
merchant had contrived to conceal from the City of London, and from his
own father, and from every human creature, except one poor, simple,
devoted soul, called Michael Penfold.

There are men, who seem stupid, yet generally go right; there are also
clever men, who appear to have the art of blundering wisely--_"sapienter
descendunt in infernum,"_ as the ancients have it; and some of these
latter will even lie on their backs, after a fall, and lift up their
voices, and prove to you that in the nature of things they ought to have
gone up, and their being down is monstrous; illusory.

Arthur Wardlaw was not quite so clever as all that. Still he misconducted
the business of the firm with perfect ability from the first month he
entered on it. Like those ambitious railways which ruin a goodly trunk
with excess of branches, not to say twigs, he set to work extending, and
extending, and sent the sap of the healthy old concern flying to the ends
of the earth.

He was not only too ambitious, and not cool enough; he was also unlucky,
or under a curse, or something; for things well conceived broke down, in
his hands, under petty accidents. And, besides, his new correspondents