a great girl, taller than
her mother and fairer of complexion, yet not unlike her, he sometimes
thought, as she began to manage the affairs of the house, and to go
about the great shabby mansion with her mother's keys jingling at her
girdle. For the years went on crawling one over the other, and soon it
was 1873, and Edith was eighteen years old.

One rainy day in this year found Jacob Dolph in Wall Street. Although he
himself did not think so, he was an old man to others, and kindly hands,
such as were to be found even in that infuriate crowd, had helped him up
the marble steps of the Sub-Treasury and had given him lodgment on one
of the great blocks of marble that dominate the street. From where he
stood he could see Wall Street, east and west, and the broad plaza of
Broad Street to the south, filled with a compact mass of men, half
hidden by a myriad of umbrellas, rain-soaked, black, glinting in the dim
light. So might a Roman legion have looked, when each man raised his
targum above his head and came shoulder to shoulder with his neighbor
for the assault.

There was a confused, ant-like movement in the vast crowd, and a dull
murmur came from it, rising, in places, into excited shouts. Here and
there the fringe of the mass swelled up and swept against the steps of
some building, forcing, or trying to force, an entry. Sometimes a narrow
stream of men trickled into the half-open doorway; sometimes the great
portals closed, and then there was a mad outcry and a low groan, and the
foremost on the steps suddenly turned back, and in some strange way
slipped through the throng and sped in all directions to bear to hushed
or clamorous offices the news that this house or that bank had
"suspended payment." "Busted," the panting messengers said to
white-faced merchants; and in the slang of the street was conveyed the
message of doom. The great panic of 1873 was upon the town--the outcome
of long years of unwarranted self-confidence, of selfish extravagance,
of conscienceless speculation--and, as hour after hour passed by,
fortunes were lost in the twinkling of an eye, and the bread was taken
out of the mouths of the helpless.

After Jacob Dolph had stood for some time, looking down upon the
tossing sea of black umbrellas, he saw a narrow lane made through the
crowd in the wake of a little party of clerks and porters, bearing aid
perhaps to some stricken bank. Slipping down, he followed close behind
them. Perhaps the jostling