cuse me. I know you all, I
know the amount of my indebtedness to you all, and I promise you all,
if I live, the very last dollar I owe you shall be paid. You must,
however, give me a little time, or nobody will get anything. I will
communicate with you all later on. Nobody shall lose anything, I say.
Now you must excuse me."

"Look at him; he's sick," whispered the pretty stenographer to the
other, whose soft, little sob of response alone broke the hush as
Carroll went out with his sister at his side. Their shadows moved
across the room as they ascended the stairs in the hall. The
creditors, left alone, regarded one another in a hesitating fashion.
The two women, Minna Eddy and Estella Griggs, remained quiet.
Presently the two butchers and the dry-goods merchant, standing about
the Oriental rug, quite a fine Bokhara, resumed their whispered
colloquy regarding it, then they went out. Lee began talking to the
druggist and the postmaster, with Willie Eddy at his elbow listening
eagerly.

"Carroll's sick," said Lee, with a curious effect of partisanship
towards himself, as well as Carroll. "He's sick, and it is too bad.
His nerves are a wreck."

"Well, our nerves are becoming wrecks," the postmaster rejoined,
dryly.

"That's so," said the druggist, with a worried look. "I don't know
but I'll have to mortgage my stock. I've lost more than I can afford
in that United Fuel."

"I don't like to own up I've been bit," said the postmaster, "but
when it comes to being sick, and nerves being wrecks, there are
others with full as much reason as Carroll."

"He'll pay up every cent," said Lee, eagerly.

"Maybe he will pay his debts," said the postmaster. "I am not going
to say he won't. I suppose he means to. But when it comes to making
things good, when he has simply led you by the nose into disastrous
speculations, I don't know. Bigger men than Arthur Carroll don't do
it."

"That's so," said Drew. "It's one thing to pay your butcher's bill in
the long run, and be above stealing goods off the counter, but a man
can cheat his fellow-men in a stock trade and think pretty well of
himself, and other folks think well of him."

"That's so," said Sigsbee Ray.

"I haven't any doubt that he will arrange that," said Lee. "And, for
that matter, the United Fuel may look up yet. I had a prospectus--"

"Prospectus be damned!" said the postmaster. He seldom used an oath,
and his tongue made a vicious lurch over it.

The druggist ga