“Good-morning, Fletcher.  Bad business, this!  I suppose you’ve heard.  Bullion went to protest yesterday.  Hope you got wind of it in time, and made all safe.”

“Bullion failed!” exclaimed Fletcher, through his chattering teeth.  “Then I’m a ruined man!”

But a sudden thought struck him, and he asked eagerly,—­

“But the money,—­haven’t you got it still?”

“No,—­paid it over yesterday.”

“Well, the shares, then?”

“No,—­sorry to say, Bullion’s clerk came for them not ten minutes before I heard of the protest.”

“O God!” groaned the unhappy man, “there is no hope!  But you, Mr. Tonsor, you are my friend; help me out of this!  You can raise the money.”

“Ten thousand dollars!  It’s a pretty large sum.  I’m afraid I couldn’t get it.”

“Try, my friend,—­you shall never regret it.”

Tonsor hesitated, and Fletcher’s spirits rose.  He watched the broker’s composed face with eyes that might pierce a mummy.

“What is the collateral?” asked Tonsor, slowly raising his wrinkled eyelids.

“Bullion’s notes for seventeen thousand dollars.”

“And Bullion gone to protest.”

“He’ll come up again.”

“Perhaps; but while he is down, I can’t do anything with his paper.  The truth is, Fletcher, you ought not to have advanced the money for him.  Remember, I warned you when you were about to do it.”

Fletcher did not look as though he found the “Balm of I-told-you-so” very consoling.

Tonsor continued,—­

“Now, if I were in your place, I would go and make a clean breast of it to Danforth.  It was wrong, though I know you didn’t mean any harm.  He may be angry, but he won’t touch you.  You can’t raise ten thousand dollars in these times,—­not to save your soul.”

“Keep your advice, and your money, too,” said Fletcher, in sullen despair.  “I ask for bread, and you give me a stone.  Your moral lecture won’t pay my debts.”

He turned away abruptly and went again to Bullion’s office.  It was still closed.  Determined at all hazards to see the man for whom he had risked so much, he went to his house on Beacon Hill.  The servant said Mr. Bullion was not at home.  Fletcher did not believe it, but the door was closed in his face before he could send a more urgent message, and with a sinking heart he retraced his steps towards State Street.

The horror of his position was now fully before him.  He could not conceal his defalcation, and there was no longer a shadow of hope of replacing the money.  Many a time he had taken the risk of lending large sums to brokers and others; but who would trust him, a man without estate, in a time like this?  In his terrible anxiety about the new obligation, he had forgotten the old, until he chanced to observe Sandford on the opposite sidewalk, strolling leisurely towards the business quarter of the town.  The