The Argosy — page 102: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

In the Dead of Night. 87 length of time. The whole affair is an infamous canard, having no other object than to discredit us in the opinion of the public. Unfortunately it is next to impossible to bring such things home to any particular individual, but I have every reason to believe that one or two who are most deeply implicated in this scandalous affair have been buying heavily for the rise which is sure to take place in a few days from the present time ; and I strongly advise you, my dear sir, to follow their example. You cannot possibly do better. So satisfied am I on that point, that within the last few days I have invested every spare shilling of my own in Alcazars. “Tn conclusion, I may just state that according to advices from our South American managers up to the latest date, received by me per last night’s mail, the mine was never in so flourishing a condition as at the present moment. © “Tt is with theutmost confidence thatI look forward to the declaration of a dividend and bonus equivalent in the gross to ery five per cent, at the close of the current half-year. ““T remain, my dear Mr. Culpepper, very truly pita ‘THEODORE BIRD.” This letter allayed the Squire’s fears and kept him quiet for several days. Strange to say, however, the Alcazars still kept steadily de- clining, and at length the old man became seriously alarmed. He wrote again to Mr. Bird, but this time there came noanswer. For five days he waited in such a state of mental agony as he had never known before. He would have gone up to London himself, in order to see Mr. Bird, but by this time the gout had laid hold of him so severely that it was quite impossible for him to venture out of the house. What to do he knew not. No one, not even his daughter, knew how, or in what speculation, he had invested his money, and yet it was evident that he must now take some one into his confidence in the matter, or else be prepared to let the Alcazars go up or down at their own sweet will, and accept the result, whatever it might be, when he should be sufficiently recovered to attend to business himself. But in the face of matters, as they now stood, that was more than he could afford to do—it was more than he dare do. Where, then, was the person on whose honour, discretion, and good business knowledge he could safely rely to assist him in the dilemma in which he now found himself? He had employed five or six brokers at different times during the last eighteen months to buy stock for him, but he had no particular knowledge of, or confidence in, any of them. In Mr. Bird himself he had always placed the most implicit confidence, but that con- fidence had been severely shaken of late. Bird had originally been a protégé of his own, and had been placed by him as a junior clerk in Mr. Cope’s bank. There he had remained for years, gradually connicloooks CO im