“Your all?  That’s what the shoemaker said; but he bought a new one for six-pence.  But, how happened it?”

“By my folly.”

“I knew that, of course; but I wanted to know what folly in particular.”

“I trusted it to a man whom I thought not only honest, but my friend, and he has proved a scoundrel.”

“You shouldn’t have led him into temptation.  You are particeps criminis, and the partaker is as bad as the thief.  Don’t trust without taking security, my friend; it’s offering a premium to crime.  Consider your guilt now!  Think of the family into whose innocent bosom you have brought sin and remorse!  Who is the luckless person?”

“Sandford!”

“I knew it.  I expected it.  He was too good by half.  I didn’t blame him for his widow-and-orphan business; somebody must do it; but I made up my mind some time ago that he would come to grief.”

“Prophets are always plenty after the event.”

“True, my friend.  But just think!  He passed by my pictures in the Exhibition, and bought the canvas of my friend Greenleaf,—­a man of genius, doubtless, but young, you understand, young.  Can you conceive of the wickedness?  I felt sure from that moment, that, if he were not totally depraved, he at least had a moral inability, as the preachers call it, that would be his ruin.”

“Well, he is ruined effectually; but the worst of it is, that he has dragged innocent people down with him.”

“’Innocent,’—­yes, you have the word.  A man that cares for money at all, and trusts all he has without security to any fair-spoken financier, is an innocent, truly.”

“Well, there is no use in lamenting, and just as little in the consolation of thinking how the loss might have been avoided.”

“I don’t know.  I don’t admit that.  I am not to be deprived of the rights of a freeborn American.  The ‘I told-you-so’ is a fine balm for all sorts of wounds,—­rather more soothing to physician than patient, perhaps.  Combined with the ‘You-might-have-known-it,’ it gets up a wholesome blister in the least possible time, especially where ‘a raw’ has been established previously.”

“I don’t think I was prudent.”

“Of course not; if you had been, you wouldn’t have lost.  There are no such things as mistakes in the world.—­But to look at affairs. Imprimis.—­Lindsay smashed, house closed, salary stopped.”

“I suppose so.”

“Item,—­private funds gone; owner taken in by the patent-safe game.

“Item,—­dwelling-house standing; so much gain,—­but

“Item,—­the dweller is not alone, having other mouths to feed.

“But don’t be discouraged.  I don’t doubt you will find something to do in good time.”

“But when is the good time coming?  I must earn something at once.”

“The danger of being made to work isn’t pressing.  Ships will have time to get well rested.  Truckmen are actually growing civil with a little starvation.  The beggars don’t hold out their hands for coppers; they make more money by hauling out their old stockings and lending at five per cent. a month.”