The lightning flashed from a good many eyes in the telegraph-office when the morning members of the associated press inquired why they had not been served with the latest news,—­why, in fact, the only item of any significance was reserved for the evening papers of the day.  Not a press of all the indignant complainants was ready to admit that it had locked up its forms and gone to bed before the wires had completed their task.  Very bitter paragraphs testified, the next day, that, in the opinion of many sage and respectable editors, the wires had been tampered with by speculators.  The poor little half-frozen telegraph-boy was closely catechized, first by the officers of the telegraph-company, and afterwards by certain shrewd detectives, but no clue could be got to the fine gentleman who so generously relieved him of his responsibility, and no result followed, except his dismissal and the employment of another lad of more ability and probably less innocence.  Captain Grant was the man most likely to have come to a discovery in the matter, and most heartily did he curse his luck—­his “usual luck”—­of giving away a fortune by selling a cargo a day too soon.  But being kept at home by uncomfortable toes, no suspicious mortal, such as abound in the lounging-rooms of insurance-offices and other resorts of business-men in town, happened ingeniously to put his suspicions on a scent, and he did not come within a league of the thought that Chip Dartmouth could have had anything to do with the strange and blamable conduct of the wires.  As he made no proclamation of his loss, and no other case of sale during the abeyance of the news came to the knowledge of the parties interested, the matter, greatly to Chip’s comfort, fell into entire oblivion before a fortnight had passed.  The understanding was, that, though great mischief might have been done, none had been,—­and that somebody had simply made waste-paper of the little yellow thunderbolt-scrawls.

For the first fortnight, Chip’s nervousness, not to say conscience, very much abated the pleasure of the many congratulations he received from his friends, and from hundreds of people whom he had never before known as his friends.  He couldn’t get through the streets any day without meeting the solidest sort of men, with whom he had never exchanged a word in his life, but whose faces were as familiar as that of the Old-South clock, who took him by the hand quite warmly, and said,—­

“Ah, Mr. Dartmouth, permit me to congratulate you on your good-fortune.  You have well deserved it.  I like to see a young man like you make such a ten-strike, especially when it comes in consequence of careful study of the market.”