hands. You'll never know
anything about your business, Mart, till you have studied in one of
those old towns. Answer. Thine,

"WIL."

When I say that Leonhard had, or _had_ had, ten thousand dollars of
Wilberforce's money, and that he was now about as unprepared to meet the
demand recorded as he would have been if he had never seen a cent of the
sum mentioned, the assertion, I think, is justified that his place was
at his office-table, and not on the promenade. What if the town-clock
had struck four? what if at this hour Miss Ayres usually rounded the
corner of Granby street on her way home? But, poor fellow! he _had_
tried to think his way through the difficulty. Every day for a week he
had exercised himself in letter--writing: he had practiced every style,
from the jocular to the gravely interrogative, and had succeeded pretty
well as a stylist, but the point, the point, the bank deposit, remained
still insurmountable and unapproachable.

Once or twice he had thought that probably the best thing to do was to
go off on a long journey, and by and by, when things had righted
themselves somehow, find out where Wilberforce was and acknowledge his
letter with regrets and explanations. He was considering this course
when he destroyed his last effort, and went out on the promenade to get
rid of his thoughts and himself and to meet Miss Ayres. The present
contained Miss Ayres; as to the future, it was dark as midnight; for the
past, it was not in the least pleasant to think of it, and how it had
come to pass that Wilberforce trusted him.

The days when he and Wilberforce were lads, poor, sad-hearted, all but
homeless, returned upon him with their shadows. It was in those days
that his friend formed so lofty an estimate of his exactness in figures
and his skill in saving, and thus it had happened that when the engine
constructed by Wilberforce began to pay him so past belief, he was
really in the perplexity concerning places of deposit which he had
expressed to Marten. Leonhard chanced to be with this young Croesus--who
had begun life by dipping water for invalids at the springs--when the
ten thousand dollars alluded to were paid him by a dealer; and the
instant transfer of the money to his hands was one of those off-hand
performances which, apparently trivial, in the end search a man to the
foundations.

What had become of the money? Seven thousand dollars were swallowed up
in a gulf which never gives back its treasure.