"
[Illustration: "I WILL GIVE YOU A THOUSAND POUNDS FOR THAT CROMPTON
LOT."]
"Ay," replied the other, carelessly lighting another cigar. It was
quite wonderful to see how many cigars Mr. Balfour got through daily;
you might have almost thought that he had been denied tobacco for years
by his physician, and had only just been permitted to resume the habit.
"Yes; you disappointed me there immensely, I must confess. I went down
to the sale on purpose to secure it."
"So you told me, or, at least, so I guessed from your manner; and yet I
don't know why you should have been so sweet upon it. It's only a bare
bit of ground with a round hole in it, close by the sea."
"That's all," said Solomon, puffing at his clay pipe. "What on earth
could have made you buy it?"
"Well, I told you once. I lost my yacht off Turlock, when coming to
England last autumn, and very nearly my life with it. When one escapes
with a whole skin from such a storm as wrecked me there, the first piece
of dry land one comes to seems very attractive. I happened to be cast
ashore beneath that very spot, and so I took a fancy to it. If I had
been a good Papist I should have built a chapel there to my patron saint
in gratitude for my preservation; as it was, I resolved to erect a villa
for myself there.
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