n scarcer
than emigrants for Widewood, he had, to his astonishment, met Proudfit.
The colonel had just arrived across. He was tipsy, as usual, and a sad
wreck, but bound for Carlsbad, bright in the faith that when he had
stayed there two months he would go home cured for life of his "only bad
habit." March was troubled, and did not become less so when Proudfit
explained that his presence was due to the "kind pressu' of Garnet and
othe's." He knew that Garnet, months before, had swapped his Land
Company stock to Proudfit for the Colonel's much better stock in the
Construction Company and succeeded him as president of the latter
concern.

"As a matteh of fawm--tempora'ily--du'ing my ill health," said the
Carlsbad pilgrim, adding, in an unfragrant stage-whisper, that there was
a secret off-setting sale of both stocks back again, the papers of which
were in Mrs. Proudfit's custody. Mrs. Proudfit was not with her husband;
she was at home, in Blackland.

John knew also how nearly down to nothing the price of his own company's
first-mortgage bonds had declined; but the Colonel's tidings of a later
fate fell upon him like a thunderbolt. He stood before his informant in
the populous street, now too sick at heart for speech, and now throbbing
with too resolute a resentment for outward show, but drawn up rigidly
with a scowl of indignant attention under his locks that made him the
observed of every quick eye. The matter--not to follow Proudfit too
closely--was this:

The Construction Company, paid in advance, and in the Land Company's
second-mortgage bonds, for its many expensive and recklessly immature
works, had promptly sold those bonds to a multitude of ready takers near
and far, but principally far. When the promised inpour of millers and
miners, manufacturers and operatives, so nearly failed that the Land
Company could not pay, nor half pay, the interest on its first-mortgage
bonds and they "tumbled," these second-mortgage bonds were, of course,
unsalable at any figure. The smallest child will understand this--and
worse to follow--at a glance; but if he doesn't he needn't. At this
point Ravenel, who had kept his paper very still, "persuaded" Gamble and
Bulger to buy, at the prices their holders had paid for them, all that
smaller portion of these second-mortgage bonds, as well as all small
lots of the Land Company's stock, held in the three counties. "The
_Courier_," he said, with his effectual smile, "couldn't afford to