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ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD 565
will be a final one some day, and I shall bleed no more. It's gay
and amusing, isn't it ? Especially when one has a wife and children."
I, for my part, felt so indignant, that I was minded to advertise
in the papers that all acceptances drawn in Philip's name were
forgeries ; and let his father take the consequences of his own act.
But the consequences would have been life imprisonment for the
old man, and almost as much disgrace and ruin for the young one,
as were actually impending. He pointed out this clearly enough ;
nor could we altogether gainsay his dismal logic. It was better, at
any rate, to meet his bill, and give the Doctor warning for the
future. Well: perhaps it was; only suppose the Doctor should
take the warning in good part, accept the rebuke with perfect
meekness, and at an early opportunity commit another forgery?
To this Philip replied that no man could resist his fate : that
he had always expected his own doom through his father: that
when the elder went to America he thought possibly the charm was
broken ; " but you see it is not," groaned Philip, " and my father's
emissaries reach me, and I am still under the spell." The bearer
of the bowstring, we know, was on his way, and would deliver his
grim message ere long.
Having frequently succeeded in extorting money from Dr.
Firmin, Mr. Tufton Hunt thought he could not do better than
follow his banker across the Atlantic; and we need not describe
the annoyance and rage of the Doctor on finding this black care
still behind his back. He had not much to give ; indeed the sum
which he took away with him, and of which he robbed his son and
his other creditors, was but small ; but Hunt was bent upon having
a portion of this ; and, of course, hinted that, if the Doctor refused,
he would carry to the New York press the particulars of Firmin's
early career and latest defalcations. Mr. Hunt had been under the
gallery of the House of Commons half-a-dozen times, and knew our
public men by sight. In the course of a pretty long and disreputable
career he had learned anecdotes regarding members of the
aristocracy, turf-men, and the like; and he offered to sell this
precious knowledge of his to more than one American paper, as
other amiable exiles from our country have done. But Hunt was
too old, and his stories too stale for the New York public. They
dated from George IV., and the boxing and coaching times. He
found but little market for his wares ; and the tipsy parson reeled
from tavern to bar, only the object of scorn to younger reprobates
who despised his old-fashioned stories, and could top them with
blackguardism of a much more modern date.
After some two years' sojourn in the United States, this worthy
felt the passionate longing to revisit his native country which