he man came.

It was an unusual order at that hour. Silently the servant obeyed.
Carshaw looked out of the window, while his mother, true to her caste,
affected nonchalance before the domestic.

"Now," said he when they were alone, "drink this. It will steady your
nerves."

She was frightened at last. Her hand shook as it took the proffered
glass.

"What has happened?" she asked, with quavering voice. She had never seen
her son like this before. There was a hint of inflexible purpose in him
that terrified her. When he spoke the new crispness in his voice shocked
her ears.

"Mere business, I assure you. Not another word about Winifred. I shall
find her, sooner or later, and we shall be married then, at once. But,
by queer chance, I have been looking into affairs of late. The manager
of our Massachusetts mills tells me that trade is slack. We have been
running at a loss for some years. Our machinery is antiquated, and we
have not the accumulated reserves to replace it. We are in debt, and our
credit begins to be shaky. Think of that, mother--the name of Carshaw
pondered over by bank managers and discounters of trade bills!"

"Senator Meiklejohn mentioned this vaguely," she admitted.

"Dear me! What an interest he takes in us! I wonder why? But, as a
financial magnate, he understands things."

"Your father always said, Rex, that trade had its cycles--fat years and
lean years, you know."

"Yes. He built up our prosperity by hard work, by spending less than
half what he earned, not by living in a town house and gadding about in
society. Do you remember, mother, how he used to laugh at your pretty
little affectations? I think I own my share of the family brains,
though, so I shall act now as he would have acted."

"Do you wish to goad me into hysteria? What are you driving at?" she
shrieked.

"That is the way to reach the heart of the mystery--get at the facts,
eh? They're simple. The business needs three hundred thousand dollars to
give it solidity and staying power; then four or five years' good and
economical management will set it right. We have been living at the rate
of fifty thousand dollars a year. For some time we have been executing
small mortgages to obtain this annual income, expecting the business to
clear them. Now the estates must come to the help of the business."

"In what way?" she gasped.

"They must be mortgaged up to the hilt to pay off the small sums and
find the large one. It will take