n Monday morning half an hour earlier than usual, so
great was my impatience to restore the amount of that unlucky draft to
my account as soon as possible after the bank opened.

On entering my office, I stopped with a startled feeling just inside the
door. Something serious had happened. The clerks, instead of being at
their desks as usual, were all huddled together in a group, talking to
each other with blank faces. When they saw me, they fell back behind my
managing man, who stepped forward with a circular in his hand.

"Have you heard the news, sir?" he said.

"No. What is it?"

He handed me the circular. My heart gave one violent throb the instant
I looked at it. I felt myself turn pale; I felt my knees trembling under
me.

Marsh, Stracey, Fauntleroy & Graham had stopped payment.

"The circular has not been issued more than half an hour," continued
my managing clerk. "I have just come from the bank, sir. The doors are
shut; there is no doubt about it. Marsh & Company have stopped this
morning."

I hardly heard him; I hardly knew who was talking to me. My strange
visitor of the Saturday had taken instant possession of all my thoughts,
and his words of warning seemed to be sounding once more in my ears.
This man had known the true condition of the bank when not another
soul outside the doors was aware of it! The last draft paid across the
counter of that ruined house, when the doors closed on Saturday, was
the draft that I had so bitterly reproached myself for drawing; the one
balance saved from the wreck was my balance. Where had the stranger got
the information that had saved me? and why had he brought it to my ears?

I was still groping, like a man in the dark, for an answer to those two
questions--I was still bewildered by the unfathomable mystery of doubt
into which they had plunged me--when the discovery of the stopping of
the bank was followed almost immediately by a second shock, far more
dreadful, far heavier to bear, so far as I was concerned, than the
first.

While I and my clerks were still discussing the failure of the firm,
two mercantile men, who were friends of mine, ran into the office, and
overwhelmed us with the news that one of the partners had been arrested
for forgery. Never shall I forget the terrible Monday morning when those
tidings reached me, and when I knew that the partner was Mr. Fauntleroy.

I was true to him--I can honestly say I was true to my belief in my
generous friend-