e shrewd old fellow had at once ordered his horse and set
out for Moorlands, some two miles distant. Nor did he draw rein or break
gallop until he threw the lines to a servant beside the lower step of
the colonel's porch.

"It's the Patapsco again! It will close its doors before the week is
out!" he cried, striding into the library, where the colonel, who had
just come in from inspecting a distant field on his estate, sat dusting
his riding-boots with his handkerchief.

"Going to stop payment! Failed! What the devil do you mean, John?"

"I mean just what I say! Everything has gone to bally-hack in the city.
Here's a letter I have just received from Harding--he's on the inside,
and knows. He thinks there's some crooked business about it; they have
been loaning money on all sorts of brick-bats, he says, and the end has
come, or will to-morrow. He wanted to post me in time."

The colonel tossed his handkerchief on his writing-table: "Who will be
hurt?" he asked hurriedly, ignoring the reference to the dishonesty of
the directors.

"Oh!--a lot of people. Temple, I know, keeps his account there. He was
short of cash a little while ago, for young Pawson, who has his law
office in the basement of his house, offered me a mortgage on his
Kennedy Square property, but I hadn't the money at the time and didn't
take it. If he got it at last--and he paid heavily for it if he did--the
way things have been going--and if he put that money in the Patapsco, it
will be a bad blow to him. Harry, I hear, is with him--so I thought you
ought to know."

Rutter had given a slight start at the mention of Temple's name among
the crippled, and a strange glitter still lingered in his eyes.

"Then I presume my son is dependent on a beggar," he exclaimed, rising
from his seat, stripping off his brown velveteen riding-jacket and
hanging it in a closet behind his chair.

"Yes, it looks that way."

Gorsuch was watching the colonel closely. He had another purpose in
making his breakneck ride. He didn't have a dollar in the Patapsco, and
he knew the colonel had not; he, like himself, was too shrewd a man to
be bitten twice by the same dog; but he had a large interest in Harry
and would leave no stone unturned to bring father and son together.

The colonel again threw himself into his chair, stretched out
his slender, well-turned legs, crooked one of his russet-leather
riding-boots to be sure the spurs were still in place, and said
slowly--rathe