XLV. GIVING IT UP

XLVI. CLEMENT'S STORY,--BEFORE THE DAWN

XLVII. THE DAWN

THE EPILOGUE: ADDED BY CLEMENT AUSTIN SEVEN YEARS AFTERWARDS




CHAPTER I.

AFTER OFFICE HOURS IN THE HOUSE OF DUNBAR, DUNBAR, AND BALDERBY.


The house of Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby, East India bankers, was one
of the richest firms in the city of London--so rich that it would be
quite in vain to endeavour to describe the amount of its wealth. It was
something fabulous, people said. The offices were situated in a dingy
and narrow thoroughfare leading out of King William Street, and were
certainly no great things to look at; but the cellars below their
offices--wonderful cellars, that stretched far away underneath the
church of St. Gundolph, and were only separated by party-walls from the
vaults in which the dead lay buried--were popularly supposed to be
filled with hogsheads of sovereigns, bars of bullion built up in stacks
like so much firewood, and impregnable iron safes crammed to overflowing
with bank bills and railway shares, government securities, family
jewels, and a hundred other trifles of that kind, every one of which was
worth a poor man's fortune.