But Fisker got the better of him and put him down.

'Fortune! what fortune had either of us?
a few beggarly thousands of dollars not worth talking of, and barely sufficient to enable a man to look at an enterprise.

And now where are you?
Look here, sir;--there's more to be got out of the smashing-up of such an affair as this, if it should smash up, than could be made by years of hard work out of such fortunes as yours and mine in the regular way of trade.' Paul Montague certainly did not love Mr Fisker personally, nor did he relish his commercial doctrines; but he allowed himself to be carried away by them.

'When and how was I to have helped myself ?' he wrote to Roger Carbury.

'The money had been raised and spent before this man came here at all.