he had in some
ways struck him the most. He had appeared to him the most perfect type
of a gentleman; self-contained, and inclined to be cold, but a man of
elegance as well as of brains. He felt that he ought to be sorry Mr.
Lancaster was dead, and he tried to be sorry for his wife. He started to
write her a letter of condolence, but stopped at the first line, and
could get no further. Yet several times a day, for many days, she
recurred to him, each time giving him a feeling of dissatisfaction,
until at length he was able to banish her from his mind.

Prosperity is like the tide. It comes, each wave higher and higher,
until it almost appears that it will never end, and then suddenly it
seems to ebb a little, comes up again, recedes again, and, before one
knows it, is passing away as surely as it came.

Just when Keith thought that his tide was in full flood, it began to ebb
without any apparent cause, and before he was aware of it, the
prosperity which for the last few years had been setting in so steadily
in those mountain regions had passed away, and New Leeds and he were
left stranded upon the rocks.

Rumor came down to New Leeds from the North. The Wickersham enterprises
were said to be hard hit by some of the failures which had occurred.

A few weeks later Keith heard that Mr. Aaron Wickersham was dead. The
clerks said that he had had a quarrel with his son the day after the
panic and had fallen in an apoplectic fit soon afterwards. But then the
old clerks had been discharged immediately after his death. Young
Wickersham said he did not want any dead-wood in his offices. Also he
did not want any dead property. Among his first steps was the sale of
the old Keith plantation. Gordon, learning that it was for sale, got a
friend to lend him the money and bought it in, though it would scarcely
have been known for the same place. The mansion had been stripped of its
old furniture and pictures soon after General Keith had left there, and
the plantation had gone down.

Rumor also said that Wickersham's affairs were in a bad way. Certainly
the new head of the house gave no sign of it. He opened a yet larger
office and began operations on a more extensive scale. The _Clarion_
said that his Southern enterprises would be pushed actively, and that
the stock of the Great Gun Mine would soon be on the New York Exchange.

Ferdy Wickersham suddenly returned to New Leeds, and New Leeds showed
his presence. Machinery was shippe