the American defaulters in Canada; other papers, after
questioning the document as a fake, made common cause in treating it as
a matter of little or no moment. In fact, there had been many
defalcations since Northwick's; the average of one a day in the
despatches of the Associated Press had been fully kept up, and several
of these had easily surpassed his in the losses involved, and in the
picturesqueness of the circumstances. People generally recalled with an
effort the supremely tragic claim of his case through the rumor of his
death in the railroad accident; those who distinctly remembered it
experienced a certain disgust at the man's willingness to shelter
himself so long in the doubt to which it had left not only the public,
but his own family, concerning his fate.

The evening after the letter appeared, Hilary was dining one of those
belated Englishmen who sometimes arrive in Boston after most houses are
closed for the summer on the Hill and the Back Bay. Mrs. Hilary and
Louise were already with Matt at his farm for a brief season before
opening their own house at the shore, and Hilary was living _en garcon_.
There were only men at the dinner, and the talk at first ran chiefly to
question of a sufficient incentive for Northwick's peculations; its
absence was the fact which all concurred in owning. In deference to his
guest's ignorance of the matter, Hilary went rapidly over it from the
beginning, and as he did so the perfectly typical character of the man
and of the situation appeared in clear relief. He ended by saying: "It
isn't at all a remarkable instance. There is nothing peculiar about it.
Northwick was well off and he wished to be better off. He had plenty of
other people's money in his hands which he controlled so entirely that
he felt as if it were his own. He used it and he lost it. Then he was
found out, and ran away. That's all."

"Then, as I understand," said the Englishman, with a strong impression
that he was making a joke, "this Mr. Northwick was _not_ one of your
most remarkable men."

Everybody laughed obligingly, and Hilary said, "He was one of our
_least_ remarkable men." Then, spurred on by that perverse impulse which
we Americans often have to make the worst of ourselves to an Englishman,
he added, "The defaulter seems to be taking the place of the self-made
man among us. Northwick's a type, a little differentiated from thousands
of others by the rumor of his death in the first place, and