irst began it had seemed easy for him to
give up everything, to let the people he owed take all, so only they
would let him go out with clean hands; and he had dramatised this
feeling in his talk with his wife, when they spoke together of the
mills on the G. L. & P. But ever since then it had been growing harder,
and he could not consent even to seem to do it now in the proposed
assignment. He had not found other men so very liberal or faithful
with him; a good many of them appeared to have combined to hunt him
down; a sense of enmity towards all his creditors asserted itself in
him; he asked himself why they should not suffer a little too. Above
all, he shrank from the publicity of the assignment. It was open
confession that he had been a fool in some way; he could not bear to
have his family--his brother the judge, especially, to whom he had
always appeared the soul of business wisdom--think him imprudent or
stupid. He would make any sacrifice before it came to that. He
determined in parting with Bellingham to make the sacrifice which he
had oftenest in his mind, because it was the hardest, and to sell his
new house. That would cause the least comment. Most people would
simply think that he had got a splendid offer, and with his usual luck
had made a very good thing of it; others who knew a little more about
him would say that he was hauling in his horns, but they could not
blame him; a great many other men were doing the same in those hard
times--the shrewdest and safest men: it might even have a good effect.
He went straight from Bellingham's office to the real-estate broker in
whose hands he meant to put his house, for he was not the sort of man
to shilly-shally when he had once made up his mind. But he found it
hard to get his voice up out of his throat, when he said he guessed he
would get the broker to sell that new house of his on the water side of
Beacon. The broker answered cheerfully, yes; he supposed Colonel
Lapham knew it was a pretty dull time in real estate? and Lapham said
yes, he knew that, but he should not sell at a sacrifice, and he did
not care to have the broker name him or describe the house definitely
unless parties meant business. Again the broker said yes; and he
added, as a joke Lapham would appreciate, that he had half a dozen
houses on the water side of Beacon, on the same terms; that nobody
wanted to be named or to have his property described.

It did, in fact, comfort Lapham a