CHAPTER LXIII.
A STARTLING ANNOUNCEMENT.

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HE proverbial serenity of Poodles was disturbed one dull winter afternoon by our old friend General Binks banging down the newly-arrived evening paper with a vehemence rarely witnessed in that quiet quarter. Mr. Dorfold, who was dosing as usual with outstretched leg’s before the fire, started up, thinking the General was dying. Major Mustard’s hat dropped off, Mr. Proser let fall the “Times Supplement,” Mr. Crowsfoot ceased conning the “Post..” Alemomh, the footman, stood aghast, and altogether there was a general cessation of every thing—Beedles was paralyzed.

The General quickly followed up the blow with a tremendous oath, and seizing Colonel Callender’s old beaver hat instead of his own new silk one, flung frantically out of the room, through the passage and into St. James’s Street, as if bent on immediate destruction.

All was amazement! What’s happened the General? Something must have gone wrong with the General! The General—the calmest, the quietest, the most, placid man in the world—suddenly convulsed with such a violent paroxysm. He who had neither chick nor child, nor anything to care about, with the certainty of an Earldom, what could have come over him?

“I’ll tell you,” exclaimed Mr. Bullion who had just dropped in on his way from the City: “I’ll tell you,” repeated he. taking up the paper which the General had thrown down. “His bank’s failed! Heard some qweerish hints as I came down Cornhill:” and forthwith! Bullion turned to the City article, and ran his accustomed eye down its contents.

“Funds opened heavily. Foreign stocks quiet. About £20,000 in bar gold. The John Brown arrived from China. Departure of the Peninsular Mail postponed,” and so on; but neither failures, nor rumours of failures, either of bankers or others, were there.