er, and every true friend of
my true friend my own!'"

Before the groups had dispersed Harry had the facts in his
possession--principally from Judge Pancoast, who gave him a full account
of the bank's collapse, some papers having been handed up to him on the
bench that morning. Summed up, his uncle was practically ruined--and he,
Harry, was the cause of it--the innocent cause, perhaps, but the cause
all the same: but for his father's cruelty and his own debts St. George
would never have mortgaged his home. That an additional sum--his uncle's
entire deposit--had been swallowed up in the crash was but part of the
same misfortune. Poe's lines were true, then--never so true as now:

"Some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster Followed fast and followed
faster..."

This, then, was ever after to be his place in life--to bring misery
wherever he went.

He caught up his hat and walked through the park beside the judge,
hoping for some further details of his uncle's present plight and future
condition, but the only thing his Honor added to what he already knew
was his wonderment over the fact that St. George, having no immediate
use for the money except to pay his bills, should have raised so large a
sum on a mortgage instead of borrowing it from his friends. It was here
that Harry's heart gave a bound:--no one, then, but his uncle, Pawson,
and himself knew that he alone was responsible for the catastrophe!
That his father should have learned of his share in it did not enter the
boy's head.

Todd answered his knock on his return, and in reply to his inquiry
informed him that he must not sit up, as "Marse George" had left word
that he would be detained until late at a meeting of the creditors of
the bank.

And so the unhappy lad, his supper over, sought his bed and, as had
occurred more than once before, spent the earlier hours of the night
gazing at the ceiling and wondering what would become of him.

CHAPTER XVIII

With the breaking of the dawn Harry's mind was made up. Before the sun
was an hour high he had dressed hurriedly, stolen downstairs so as to
wake no one, and closing the front door softly behind him had taken the
long path through the park in the direction of the wharves. Once there,
he made the rounds of the shipping offices from Light Street wharf to
the Falls--and by the time St. George had finished dressing--certainly
before he was through his coffee--had entered the name of Henry Rutter