Here it must be explained that the great Damelioc estates, after passing through several hands, had come in 1801 to an Irishman, a Mr. Eustatius Burke, who had made no small part of his fortune by voting for the Union. Mr. Burke, as Martin rightly guessed, would have given something more than the value of Hall to add it to Damelioc; and so, when Nicholas Rosewarne drove over and petitioned for a loan of £1500, he lent with alacrity. He knew enough of the situation to be thoroughly deceived. After Nanscawne, he would reach his hand out upon Hall itself. He lent the sum at five per cent, and dreamed of an early foreclosure.
Armed with ready money, the two Rosewarnes called in the leases of their fields, hired labourers, sowed corn, harvested, and sold at war prices. They bought land—still upon mortgage—on the other side of the harbour, and at the close of the great year 1812 (when the price of wheat soared far above £6 a quarter) Nicholas Rosewarne died a moderately rich man. By this time Martin had started a victualling yard in the town, a shipbuilding yard, and an emporium near the Barbican, Plymouth, where he purveyed ships' stores and slop-clothing for merchant seamen. He made money, too, as agent for most of the smuggling companies along the coast, although he embarked little of his own wealth in the business, and never assisted in an actual run of the goods. He had ceased to borrow actively now, for other people's money came to him unsought, to be used.
The Rosewarnes, as large employers of labour, paid away considerable sums weekly in wages. But those were times of paper money. All coin was scarce, and in some villages a piece of gold would not be seen in a twelvemonth. Martin and his father paid for labour in part by orders on their own shops; for the rest, and at first for convenience rather than profit, they set up a bank and issued their own notes—those for one or two pounds payable at their own house, and those for larger sums by their London agent. At first these notes would be cashed at once. By and by they began to pass as ordinary tender. Before long, people who possessed a heap of this paper learnt that the Rosewarnes would give them interest for it as well as for money, and bethought them that, if hoarded, it ran the risk of robbery, besides being unproductive. Timidly and at long intervals men came to Martin and asked him to take charge of their wealth. He agreed, of course. 'Use the money of others' was still his motto. So Rosewarne's became a deposit bank.
To the end Nicholas imperfectly understood these operations. By a clause in his will he begged his son as a favour to pay off every penny of mortgage money. On the morning after the funeral, Martin stuffed three stout rolls of bank-notes into his pocket, and rode over to Damelioc. Mr. Burke had for six years been Lord Killiow, in the peerage of Ireland, and for two years a Privy Councillor. He received Martin affably. He recognised that this yeoman-looking fellow had been too clever for him, and bore no malice.
"I've a proposition to make to you, Rosewarne," said he, as he signed the receipts. "You are a vastly clever man, and I judge you to be trustworthy. For my part, I hate lawyers "—
"Amen!" put in Martin.
"And I thought of asking you to act as my steward at a salary. It won't take up a great deal of your time," urged his lordship; for Martin had walked to the long window, and stood there, gazing out over the park, with his hands clasped beneath his coat-tails.
"As for that, I've time to spare," answered Martin. "Banking's the easiest business in the world. When it's hard, it's wrong. But would you give me a free hand?"
"I cannot bind my brother Patrick, if that's what you mean. When I'm in the grave he must act according to his folly. If he chooses to dismiss you."—
"I'll chance that. But you are asking a good deal of me. Your brother is an incurable gambler. He owes something like £20,000 at this moment—money borrowed mainly on post obits."