idated condition. No further business will be done until
its affairs are compromised;" the sheriff's deputy would announce, in a
loud voice, as he endeavored to keep the crowd back. "There's only an
empty safe, gentlemen, and some handsome office furniture," he would
ejaculate. "You can't have them, you know."

Extravagance had indeed swallowed up all the substance and left only
these insignificant things for the crowd of anxious creditors to feast
their eyes on.

Rumor after rumor rang through Wall Street, each in turn increasing the
amount of Topman's forgeries, and adding new names to the list of his
victims. Bank ledgers were examined to see if the name of the firm
appeared on them, and portly old directors put on their spectacles and
congratulated themselves that the concern did not owe them a shilling.
Groups of excited men stood at street corners discussing in animated
tones the great event of the street. Everybody knew it must come. Nobody
expected it would come so soon.

The strangest thing of all was that no one knew anything of the
antecedents of either member of the firm, or what the great Kidd
Discovery Company was really based upon. Enterprising gentlemen had
bought and sold the stock, and made and lost money by it. That was all
they knew of it. The morning papers had given them an interesting
account about Gusher; now some one was needed to tell them all about
Topman--where he came from, who he was, and where he was to be found.
There was enough to call him rascal now. Even those who had ridden in
his carriage, and enjoyed his dinners, and indeed thought him the best
of fellows a few weeks before, were now ready to give him the hardest of
kicks.

In truth, the firm was a mystery in Wall Street, and its largest
creditors were in the greatest darkness concerning it. Some one has
truly said that in a great commercial city men are known only by their
enterprises and their successes; that their antecedents become lost in
the magnitude and rapidity with which events revolve. This is
particularly so with us. The firm of Topman & Gusher had fixed itself in
Pearl Street, and gone quietly into business without friends,
acquaintances, or endorsers; and in a single year had secured both
credit and respectability. And it had done this on what is too
frequently mistaken for energy and enterprise--show and pretension.

Upon Chapman's shoulders, however, the crushing effect of this great
disaster fell heaviest. Str