Of High Descent. Fenn George Manville

sir, you’d better go now. And might have gone before for all the good you’ve done,” grumbled the old man, as Harry passed the window.

      The old man had hardly spent another half-hour over his work when there was a sharp tapping at the door, such as might be given by the knob on a stick.

      “Come in.”

      The door was opened, and Pradelle entered and gave a sharp look round.

      “Morning,” he said in a cavalier way. “Tell Mr Vine I want to speak to him for a moment.”

      Old Crampton looked up from his writing, and fixed his eyes on the visitor’s hat.

      “Not at home,” he said shortly.

      “How long will he be?”

      “Don’t know.”

      “Where has he gone?”

      “Tin works.”

      “Confounded old bear!” muttered Pradelle as he went out, after frowning severely at the old clerk, who did not see it.

      “Idle young puppy!” grumbled Crampton, dotting an i so fiercely that he drove his pen through the paper. “I’d have knocked his hat off if I had had my ruler handy.”

      Van Heldre was busy at work with a shovel when Harry Vine reached the tin-smelting works, which the merchant had added to his other ventures. He was beside a heap of what rather resembled wet coarsely ground coffee.

      “Ah, Harry,” he said, “you may as well learn all these things. Be useful some day. Take hold of that shovel and turn that over.”

      A strong mind generally acts upon one that is weak, and it was so here.

      Harry felt disposed, as he looked at his white hands, the shovel, and the heap, to thrust the said white hands into his pockets and walk away.

      But he took the shovel and plunged it in the heap, lifted it full, and then with a look of disgust said —

      “What am I to do with it?”

      “Shovel it away and get more out of the centre.”

      Harry obeyed, and looked up.

      “Now take a couple of handfuls and examine them. Don’t be afraid, man, it’s honest dirt.”

      Van Heldre set the example, took a handful, and poured it from left to right and back.

      “Now,” he said, “take notice: that’s badly washed.”

      “Not soap enough,” said Harry, hiding his annoyance with an attempt at being facetious.

      “Not exactly,” said Van Heldre dryly; “bad work. Now when that tin is passed through the furnace there’ll be twice as much slag and refuse as there ought to be. That will do. Leave the shovel, I want you to take account of those slabs of tin. Mark them, number them, and enter them in this book. It will take you an hour. Then bring the account down to me at the office.”

      “I can have a man to move the slabs?”

      “No: they are all busy. If I were doing it, I should work without a man.”

      “Hang it all! I’m about sick of this,” said Harry. “How mad Aunt Marguerite would be if she could see me now!”

      He looked round at the low dirty sheds on one side, at the row of furnaces on the other, two of which emitted a steady roar as the tin within gradually turned from a brown granulated powder to a golden fluid, whose stony scum was floating on the top.

      “It’s enough to make any man kick against his fate. Nice occupation for a gentleman, ’pon my word!”

      A low whistle made him look up. “Why, Vic,” he cried; “I thought you were in town.”

      “How are you, my Trojan?” cried the visitor boisterously. “I was in town, but I’ve come back. I say, cheerful work this for Monsieur le Comte Henri des Vignes!”

      “Don’t chaff a fellow,” said Harry angrily. “What brought you down?”

      “Two things.”

      “Now, look here, Vic. Don’t say any more about that. Perhaps after a time I may get her to think differently, but now – ”

      “I was not going to say anything about your sister, my dear boy. I can wait and bear anything. But I suppose I may say something about you.”

      “About me?”

      “Yes. I’ve got a splendid thing on. Safe to make money – heaps of it.”

      “Yes; but your schemes always want money first.”

      “Well, hang it all, lad! you can’t expect a crop of potatoes without planting a few bits first. It wouldn’t want much. Only about fifty pounds. A hundred would be better, but we could make fifty do.”

      Harry shook his head.

      “Come, come; you haven’t heard half yet. I’ve the genuine information. It would be worth a pile of money. It’s our chance now – such a chance as may never occur again.”

      “No, no; don’t tempt me, Vic,” said Harry, after a long whispered conversation.

      “Tempt? I feel disposed to force you, lad. It makes me half wild to see you degraded to such work as this. Why, if we do as I propose, you will be in a position to follow out your aunt’s instructions, engage lawyers to push on your case, and while you obtain your rights, I shall be in a position to ask your sister’s hand without the chance of a refusal. I tell you the thing’s safe.”

      “No, no,” said Harry, shaking his head; “it’s too risky. We should lose and be worse off than ever.”

      “With a horse like that, and me with safe private information about him!”

      “No,” said Harry, “I won’t. I’m going to keep steadily on here, and, as the governor calls it, plod.”

      “That you’re not, if I know it,” cried Pradelle, indignantly. “I won’t stand it. It’s disgraceful. You shan’t throw yourself away.”

      “But I’ve got no money, old fellow.”

      “Nonsense! Get some of the old man.”

      “No; I’ve done it too often. He won’t stand it now.”

      “Well, of your aunt.”

      “She hasn’t a penny but what my father lets her have.”

      “Your sister. Come, she would let you have some.”

      Harry shook his head.

      “No, I’m not going to ask her. It’s no good, Vic; I won’t.”

      “Well,” said Pradelle, apostrophising an ingot of tin as it lay at his feet glistening with iridescent hues, “if any one had told me, I wouldn’t have believed it. Why, Harry, lad, you’ve only been a month at this mill-horse life, and you’re quite changed. What have they been doing to you, man?”

      “Breaking my spirit, I suppose they’d call it,” said the young man bitterly.

      Harry shook his head.

      “Get out! I won’t have it. You want waking up,” said Pradelle, in a low, earnest voice. “Think, lad, a few pounds placed as I could place ’em, and there’s fortune for us both, without reckoning on what you could do in France. As your aunt says, there’s money and a title waiting for you, if you’ll only stretch out your hand to take ’em. Come, rouse yourself. Harry Vine isn’t the lad to settle down to this drudgery. Why, I thought it was one of the workmen when I came up.”

      “It’s of no use,” said Harry gloomily, as he seated himself on the ingots of tin. “A man must submit to his fate.”

      “Bah! a man’s fate is what he makes it. Look here; fifty or a hundred borrowed for a few days, and then repaid.”

      “But suppose – ”

      “Suppose!” cried Pradelle mockingly; “a business