This gentleman was Philip Sheldon's clerk, the
younger son of a rich Yorkshire farmer, who had come to London with the
intention of making his fortune on the Stock Exchange, and whose father
had paid a considerable sum in order to obtain for this young man the
privilege of reading the Times in Mr. Sheldon's office, and picking up
whatever knowledge might be obtained from the business transactions of
his employer.
The career of Philip Sheldon had been watched with some interest by his
fellow-townsmen of Barlingford. They had seen him leave that town with a
few hundreds in his pocket, and they had heard of him twelve years
afterwards as a prosperous stockbroker, with a handsome house and a
handsome carriage, and the reputation of being one of the sharpest men in
the City. The accounts of him that came to Barlingford were all more or
less exaggerated; and the men who discussed his cleverness and his good
luck were apt to forget that he owed the beginning of his fortunes to Tom
Halliday's eighteen thousand pounds. The one fact that impressed Philip
Sheldon's townsmen was the fact that a Barlingford man had made money on
the Stock Exchange; and the one inference they drew therefrom was the
inference that other Barlingford men might do the same.
Thus it had happened that Mr. Stephen Orcott, of Plymley Rise farm, near
Barlingford, being at a loss what to do with a somewhat refractory
younger son, resolved upon planting his footsteps in the path so
victoriously trodden by Philip Sheldon.
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