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'You seeet it taken up in your own country,' said Mel it all taken up there Our folk, sir, are quick enough at the game; but you don't want thees this kind of thing like coo that the thing is alive in London, they'll be alive there And it's the sa like wildfire in Aot?'

'What we've gone to work upon is a concession for ress We're to have the land for nothing, of course, and a grant of one thousand acres round every station, the stations to be twenty-five miles apart'

'And the land is to be made over to you,--when?'

'When we have made the line up to the station' Fisker understood perfectly that Mr Melmotte did not ask the question in reference to any value that he ht attach to the possession of such lands, but to the attractiveness of such a prospectus in the eyes of the outside world of speculators

'And what do you want me to do, Mr Fisker?'

'I want to have your naer down on a spot on which it was indicated that there was, or was to be, a chairlish Board of Directors, but with a space for the name hitherto blank

'Who are to be your directors here, Mr Fisker?'

'We should ask you to choose theue should be one, and perhaps his friend Sir Felix Carbury et probably one of the Directors of the City and West End But ould leave it all to you,--as also the aave yourself to it, heart and soul, Mr Mel that there has been out for a long time There would be such a mass of stock!'

'You have to back that with a certain amount of paid-up capital?'

'We take care, sir, in the West not to cripple coes Look at e've done already, sir, by having our liht across the continent, from San Francisco to New York Look at--'

'Never o from New York to San Francisco, and I don't know that they do want to go to Vera Cruz But I will look at it, and you shall hear from me' The intervieas over, and Mr Fisker was contented with it Had Mr Melmotte not intended at least to think of it, he would not have given ten minutes to the subject After all, anted from Mr Melmotte was little more than his name, for the use of which Mr Fisker proposed that he should receive from the speculative public two or three hundred thousand pounds