ready to adore him as their idea of a divine, superhuman, miracle-moving, inspired prophet—­declared that his wondrous work was best done, his calculations most quickly and most truly made, that he saw with most accurate eye into the far-distant balance of profit and loss, when he was under the influence of the rosy god.  To these worshippers his breakings-out, as his periods of intemperance were called in his own set, were his moments of peculiar inspiration—­his divine frenzies, in which he communicated most closely with those deities who preside over trade transactions; his Eleusinian mysteries, to approach him in which was permitted only a few of the most favoured.

‘Scatcherd has been drunk this week past,’ they would say one to another, when the moment came at which it was to be decided whose offer should be accepted for constructing a harbour to hold all the commerce of Lancashire, or to make a railway from Bombay to Canton.  ’Scatcherd has been drunk this week past; I am told that he has taken over three gallons of brandy.’  And then they felt sure that none but Scatcherd would be called upon to construct the dock or make the railway.

But be this as it may, be it true or false that Sir Roger was most efficacious when in his cups, there can be no doubt that he could not wallow for a week in brandy, six or seven times every year, without in a great measure injuring, and permanently injuring, the outward man.  Whatever immediate effect such symposiums might have on the inner mind—­symposiums indeed they were not; posiums I will call them, if I may be allowed; for in latter life, when he drank heavily, he drank alone—­however little for evil, or however much for good the working of his brain might be affected, his body suffered greatly.  It was not that he became feeble or emaciated, old-looking or inactive, that his hand shook, or that his eye was watery; but that in the moments of his intemperance his life was often worth a day’s purchase.  The frame which God had given to him was powerful beyond the power of ordinary men; powerful to act in spite of these violent perturbations; powerful to repress and conquer the qualms and headaches and inward sicknesses to which the votaries of Bacchus are ordinarily subject; but this power was not without its limit.  If encroached on too far, it would break and fall and come asunder, and then the strong man would at once become a corpse.

Scatcherd had but one friend in the world.  And, indeed, this friend was not friend in the ordinary acceptance of the word.  He neither ate with him nor drank with him, nor even frequently talked with him.  Their pursuits in life were wide asunder.  Their tastes were all different.  The society in which they moved very seldom came together.  Scatcherd had nothing in unison with this solitary friend; but he trusted him, and he trusted no other living creature in God’s earth.