Mr. Shanks paused and hesitated. It was a very great object with him to get John Ayliffe out of the country, in order that he might say any thing he liked of John Ayliffe when his back was turned, but it was also a very great object with him to keep all the money he had got. He did not like to part with one sixpence of it. After a few moments' thought, however, he recollected that a thousand pounds' worth of plate had come down from London for the young man within the last two months, and he thought he might make a profitable arrangement.
"I have got three hundred pounds in the house," he said, "all in good gold, but I can really hardly afford to part with it. However, rather than injure you, Sir John, I will let you have it if you will give me the custody of your plate till your return, just that I may have something to show if any one presses me for money."
The predominant desire of John Ayliffe's mind, at that moment, was to get out of England as fast as possible, and he was too much blinded by fear and anxiety to perceive that the great desire of Mr. Shanks was to get him out. But there was one impediment. The sum of four hundred pounds thus placed at his command would, some years before, have appeared the Indies to him, but now, with vastly expanded ideas with regard to expense, it seemed a drop of water in the ocean. "Three hundred pounds. Shanks," he said, "what's the use of three hundred pounds? It would not keep me a month."
"God bless my soul!" said Mr. Shanks, horrified at such a notion, "why it would keep me a whole year, and more too. Moreover, things are cheaper there than they are here; and besides you have got all those jewels, and knick-knacks, and things, which cost you at least a couple of thousand pounds. They would sell for a great deal."
"Come, come, Shanks," said the young man, "you must make it five hundred guineas. I know you've got them in your strong box here."
Shanks shook his head, and John Ayliffe added sullenly, "Then I'll stay and fight it out too. I won't go and be a beggar in a foreign land."
Shanks did not like the idea of his staying, and after some farther discussion a compromise was effected. Mr. Shanks agreed to advance four hundred pounds. John Ayliffe was to make over to him, as a pledge, the whole of his plate, and not to object to a memorandum to that effect being drawn up immediately, and dated a month before. The young man was to set off the very next day, in the pleasant gray of the morning, driving his own carriage and horses, which he was to sell as soon as he got a convenient distance from his house, and Mr. Shanks was to take the very best possible care of his interests during his absence.
John Ayliffe's spirits rose at the conclusion of this transaction. He calculated that with one thing or another he should have sufficient money to last him a year, and that was quite as far as his thoughts or expectations went. A long, long year! What does youth care for any thing beyond a year? It seems the very end of life to pant in expectation, and indeed, and in truth, it is very often too long for fate.
"Next year I will"—Pause, young man! there is a deep pitfall in the way. Between you and another year may be death. Next year thou wilt do nothing—thou wilt be nothing.
His spirits rose. He put the money into his pocket, and, with more wit than he thought, called it "light heaviness," and then he sat down and smoked a pipe, while Mr. Shanks drew up the paper; and then he drank punch, and made more, and drank that too, so that when the paper giving Mr. Shanks a lien upon the silver was completed, and when a dull neighbor had been called in to see him sign his name, it needed a witness indeed to prove that that name was John Ayliffe's writing.