he had
previously forced to absorb his waking hours.

It was this terror Huntington saw in his classmate's eyes which told him
all that any one would ever know of the real tragedy. Hamlen looked
years older,--his face was more sallow, his hair more grey. Huntington
looked at him in pity, and felt apprehensive lest the task he had
allotted to himself had been too long postponed. Then the thought came
back to him, "He considers himself a failure and me a success!"

The welcome was such as to reassure Hamlen as much as anything could.
Huntington made him feel as much at home as was possible for one whose
mental poise was so sadly disordered. No special effort was made at
conversation; everything was treated as a matter of course. Little by
little Hamlen found himself, and as he spoke more freely Huntington
entered into his spirit, but followed rather than led.

"It is a relief to get into this quieter atmosphere after New York,"
Hamlen remarked after they had sat in silence for some moments at the
table after dinner. "I felt as if I had been suddenly put down in a
whirling maelstrom, and there wasn't a minute when I did not expect to
be annihilated the next!"

Huntington laughed quietly. "A New-Yorker would consider that the most
subtle compliment you could pay his city. It is not enough to have the
stranger merely impressed; he must be appalled!"

Hamlen raised his hands in a silent gesture.

"Have you arranged your business matters to your satisfaction?"
Huntington asked, rather by way of conversation than from curiosity.

"Yes," Hamlen answered, but with a mental reservation which his friend
noticed,--"yes; and yet even that wasn't as I expected."

He paused a moment, gazing into the fire which Huntington had ordered
lighted to take off the chill which the late Spring still left in the
air.

"I am puzzled about it," Hamlen continued. "You see, most of my
investments have been in England, and it seemed to me that it would be
wise to take advantage of an opportunity I had to realize on them, and
to reinvest here in the States while everything is so much below its
real value. Knowing Mr. Thatcher as I did I naturally went straight to
him about it. He was most kind in advising me to hold off a while
longer, as securities are likely to fall still further; but when I asked
him to accept my money on deposit he declined, and offered instead to
give me a letter of introduction to a bank."

"Why, Thatcher's house doe