There were, or were to be, some transactions with Rummun Loll, and Barnes Newcome, being in doubt, asks the colonel a question or two as to the certainty of the Rummun's money, much to the colonel's disgust.

"The young man of business had dropped his drawl or his languor, and was speaking quite unaffectedly, good-naturedly, and selfishly.

Had you talked to him for a week you would not have made him understand the scorn and loathing with which the colonel regarded him.

Here was a young fellow as keen as the oldest curmudgeon,--a lad with scarce a beard to his chin, that would pursue his bond as rigidly as Shylock." "Barnes Newcome never missed a church," he goes on, "or dressing for dinner.

He never kept a tradesman waiting for his money.