arrive. Once more, good evening!"

The old clerk bowed and left the room.

"Well, Austin," said Mr. Balderby, turning to the cashier, "we may
prepare ourselves to meet our new chief very speedily. He must know that
you and I cannot be entirely ignorant of the story of his youthful
peccadilloes, and he will scarcely give himself airs to us, I should
fancy."

"I don't know that, Mr. Balderby," the cashier answered; "if I am any
judge of human nature, Henry Dunbar will hate us because of that very
crime of his own, knowing that we are in the secret, and will be all the
more disagreeable and disdainful in his intercourse with us. He will
carry it off with a high hand, depend upon it."




CHAPTER II.

MARGARET'S FATHER.


The town of Wandsworth is not a gay place. There is an air of old-world
quiet in the old-fashioned street, though dashing vehicles drive through
it sometimes on their way to Wimbledon or Richmond Park.

The sloping roofs, the gable-ends, the queer old chimneys, the quaint
casement windows, belong to a bygone age; and the traveller, coming a