rawn up the ice-cold
water, and, plunging in the sweet-smelling gourd, had drank to his
heart's content.

This was what wells were made for; and so were fathers, and big,
generous men like his Uncle George, who had dozens of friends ready to
cram money into his pocket for him to hand over to whoever wanted it and
without a moment's hesitation--just as Slater had handed him the money
he needed when Gilbert wanted it in a hurry.

Nor could it be expected that Harry, even with the examination of St.
George's accounts with the Patapsco and other institutions going on
under his very eyes, understood fully just what a bank failure really
meant. Half a dozen banks, he remembered, had gone to smash some few
years before, sending his father to town one morning at daylight, where
he stayed for a week, but no change, so far as he could recall, had
happened because of it at Moorlands. Indeed, his father had bought a new
coach for his mother the very next week, out of what he had "saved from
the wreck," so he had told her.

It was not until the hurried overhauling of a mass of papers beneath
his uncle's hand, and the subsequent finding of a certain stray sheet
by Pawson, that the boy was aroused to a sense of the gravity of the
situation. And even then his interest did not become acute until,
the missing document identified, St. George had turned to Pawson and,
pointing to an item halfway down the column, had said in a lowered tone,
as if fearing to be overheard:

"You have the receipts, have you not, for everything on this
list?--Slater's account too, and Hampson's?"

"They are in the file beside you, sir."

"Well, that's a comfort, anyhow."

"And the balance"--here he examined a small book which lay open beside
him--"amounting to"--he paused--"is of course locked up in their
vaults?"

Harry had craned his head in instant attention. His quickened ears had
caught two familiar names. It was Slater who had loaned him the five
hundred dollars which he gave to Gilbert, which his father had commended
him for borrowing; and it was Hampson who had sold him the wretched
horse that had stumbled and broken his leg and had afterwards to be
shot.

"Slater, did you say, Uncle George--and Hampson? Aren't they my old
accounts?"

"Quite right, Mr. Rutter--quite right, sir." St. George tried to stop
him with a frown, but Pawson's face was turned towards Harry and he
failed to get the signal. "Quite right, and quite lucky; they were bot