's hands for a second; that was all.

"So this was what you two conspirators were talking about downstairs,
as if I could not be trusted. Did you think that I would faint, or
perhaps weep? The padre deserves a good scolding, and as for you--"
Then Kate went over and cast an arm round her father's neck, whose face
was quivering.

"It is rather a disappointment to leave the Lodge when we were getting
it to our mind; but we 'll have a jolly little home somewhere, and I
'll get a chance of earning something. Dancing now--I think that I
might be able to teach some girls how to waltz. Then my French is
really intelligible, and most colloquial; besides revolver shooting.
Dad, we are on our way to a fortune, and at the worst you 'll have your
curry and cheroots, and I 'll have a well-fitting dress. Voila, mon
pere."

When the two Drumtochty men arrived next forenoon at the hall in
Glasgow, where the shareholders had been summoned to receive
particulars of their ruin, the dreary place was filled with a crowd
representative of every class in the community except the highest,
whose wealth is in land, and the lowest, whose possessions are on their
backs. There were city merchants, who could not conceal their chagrin
that they had been befooled; countrymen, who seemed utterly dazed, as
if the course of the seasons had been reversed; prosperous tradesmen,
who were aggressive in appearance and wanted to take it out of
somebody; widows, who could hardly restrain their tears, seeing before
them nothing but starvation; clergymen, who were thinking of their boys
taken from school and college. For a while the victims were silent,
and watched with hungry eyes the platform door, and there was an eager
rustle when some clerk came out and laid a bundle of papers on the
table. This incident seemed to excite the meeting and set tongues
loose. People began to talk to their neighbours explaining how they
came to be connected with the bank, as if this were now a crime. One
had inherited the shares and had never had resolution to sell them;
another had been deceived by a friend and bought them; a third had
taken over two shares for a bad debt. A minister thought that he must
have been summoned by mistake, for he was simply a trustee on an estate
which had shares, but he was plainly nervous about his position. An
Ayrshire Bailie had only had his shares for six months, and he put it,
to his circle, with municipal eloquence, whether he c