Freddy looked at his watch for a minute and a half.
"I now wish," said he, very deliberately and distinctly as he masticated the Policeman, "I now wish that my tarring and feathering and all its consequences may be blotted out of my history for ever!"
CHAPTER III.
With the muffled sound of a distant explosion ringing in his head, Freddy found himself sitting in a comfortable room fitted up partly as an office, and partly as a luxurious study. He was seated at a handsome mahogany writing-table, furnished with every little luxury that can reduce the toil and enhance the pleasures of pen-work. Above a handsome statuary marble mantelpiece hung a portrait of himself in the act of addressing society at large on the subject of a scroll of parchment with a pendent seal, and regardless of the threatening appearance of a raging thunderstorm, from which a pillar and a crimson curtain afforded an inadequate protection. Beneath his feet was an Axminster carpet of astonishing pile, and two or three easy-chairs, with a comfortable welcoming "come along, old man" sort of expression, stood about the room.
"It is quite clear," said Freddy, "that I'm a banker's clerk of some kind. I wonder what Bank I belong to. Rather a prosperous concern apparently—or, what is still more likely, a flashy and unsubstantial one."
He took some paper from a stand in front of him, and
