The Argosy — page 103: what you’re looking at

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

83 In the Dead of Night. > working his way up, and always very grateful to the Squire for Nm interest that he had taken in his welfare. Then came an advantageous removal to London, after which the Squire lost sight of him for seve years. When he next turned up it was as secretary to the Alcazar Mining Company, and as promoter of several other speculative schemes, with a fine house in the Regent’s Park, a capital cellar of wines, and a pair of steppers in his brougham that a duchess might have been proud of. The Squire went to dine with him. Mr. Bird did not fail delicately to insinuate that to Mr. Culpepper’s generous kindness in giving him such an excellent start in life he attributed all his after success, and that the blessings by which he was now surrounded owed their origin to the Squire alone. Before the day was over, Mr. Culpepper had agreed to invest a very considerable sum in Alcazar stock. | Squire Culpepper’s income, considering his position and influence, was anything but a large one. It amounted in all to very little more than three thousand a year. The estate itself was strictly entailed, all but one corner of it, which had been bought by the late Squire and added to it. It was in this corner that the present Squire had proposed to build his new mansion. But unless the Alcazar shares should rise very much again in public favour, there would be no funds forthcoming wherewith to build a new mansion, or even to repair the old one. Out of this income of three thousand a year the Squire had always contrived to save something; and thus, little by little, he had gradually accumulated some twenty thousand pounds. This was to be Jane's dowry when she should marry. It was in the hope of being able to turn this twenty thousand into sixty or seventy thousand that had been his first inducement to speculate; and had he sold out when the Alcazars were at the flood-tide of their success, not only would this hope have been realized, but what to many had seemed an idle boast, that before long he would have built for him a new and a more magni- ficent Pincote, would have become a substantial reality. These golden prospects, however, these magnificent castles in the air, had of late been losing their brightness and were fast resolving themselves into the misty cloud-land from which they had sprung. Very loth, indeed, was the Squire to let them go. Buoyed up by Mr. Bird’s letter, he had deferred from day to day the painful act of selling out, still clinging with desperate tenacity to his cloudy battle-~ ments, and trying with all his might to believe that the frown which fortune had of late put on had been merely assumed to frighten him fer a little while, and that behind it her golden smile was still lurking, and ready at any time to shine on him again. | But, by-and-by, there came a day when the Alcazars, still bent on going down, reached at one fell plunge a lower deep than they had — ever dropped to before. Next morning they were quoted in the lists" (ECA MINCE