the small foreign firms. Bills to meet from those quarters, (say) forty
thousand pounds--and, I fear, no remittances to cover them. Particulars
stated in another letter addressed to you at Post-office, Ilfracombe. I
am quite broken down with anxiety, and confined to my bed. Pizzituti is
still detained at Smyrna. Come back at once."

The same evening Turlington was at his office in Austin Friars,
investigating the state of affairs, with his head clerk to help him.

Stated briefly, the business of the firm was of the widely miscellaneous
sort. They plied a brisk trade in a vast variety of commodities. Nothing
came amiss to them, from Manchester cotton manufactures to Smyrna figs.
They had branch houses at Alexandria and Odessa, and correspondents
here, there, and everywhere, along the shores of the Mediterranean, and
in the ports of the East. These correspondents were the persons alluded
to in Mr. Branca's letter as "small foreign firms;" and they had
produced the serious financial crisis in the affairs of the great house
in Austin Friars, which had hurried Turlington up to London.

Every one of these minor firms claimed and received the privilege of
drawing bills on Pizzituti, Turlington & Branca for amounts varying
from four to six thousand pounds--on no better security than a verbal
understanding that the money to pay the bills should be forwarded before
they fell due. Competition, it is needless to say, was at the bottom of
this insanely reckless system of trading. The native firms laid it down
as a rule that they would decline to transact business with any house
in the trade which refused to grant them their privilege. In the ease of
Turlington's house, the foreign merchants had drawn their bills on him
for sums large in the aggregate, if not large in themselves; had long
since turned those bills into cash in their own markets, for their own