“Oh! it’s bad business.  I’m sorry for her, and it knocks me out, I ain’t my old self.  I got up feeling beautiful, and it just knocks me.  I don’t think she ought to build no monument, nor no hospital, for it keeps her hoping.  What’s the use of hoping?  I’ll find that yawl.  Curious about that yawl.  Wouldn’t it be great stuff if he should show up?  Wonder what he’d think of his monument and his hospital?  A hospital, now, ain’t so bad.  You could take his name off it.  They’ll do that some day, anyhow, I reckon.  I’ve seen the name changed on a good many signs in Chicago.  But what’s a monument good for after the duck has showed up?  Old man, wouldn’t it be a sensation?  Seven columns!”

Corkey slaps his leg.  He quakes his head.  The little tongue plays about the black tobacco.  He sneezes.  The passengers are generally upset.

A substantial woman of fifty, out collecting her rents, expostulates in a sharp voice.

A girl of seventeen laughs in a manner foreboding hysteria.

The conductor flies to the scene.

“None o’ that in here!” he cries, frowning majestically on Corkey.

“Don’t you be so gay, or I’ll get you fired off the road,” answers the cause of all the commotion.

“Randolph street!” yells the conductor in a great voice.

The irate and insulted Corkey debarks with Lockwin.

“Pardner, I wouldn’t like to see him come back, though.  I’d be sorry for him.  Think of the racket he’d have to take!”

“What time does the train start for New York?” asks Lockwin.

“Panic!  Panic!  Panic!” is the deafening cry of the newsboys.

The two men join a crowd in front of a telegraph office.  Bulletins are on a board and in the windows.  Men are rushing about.  The scene is in strange contrast with the sylvan drama which is closing far to the north, where the choir is singing “Asleep in Jesus.”

There is a financial crash on the New York Stock Exchange.  Bank after bank is failing.  “The New State’s Fund Closes,” is the latest bulletin.

“I got pretty near a thousand cases,” says Corkey, “but you bet your sweet life she ain’t in no bank.  I put my money in the vaults.”

“Banks are better,” says Lockwin.  He has a bank-book somewhere in his pockets.  He pulls forth a mass of letters gray with wear.  The visible letter reads: 

“HON.  DAVID LOCKWIN,
Washington,
D. C.”

His thought is that he should destroy these telltale documents.  Then he wonders what may be in these envelopes.  There flashes over him a new feeling—­a sharp, lightning-like stroke passes across his shoulder-blade and down his arm.

It is Esther’s handwriting, faded but familiar.  The envelope is still sealed.  It is a letter he got at Washington.

The man trembles violently.

“’Fraid you’re stuck?” asks Corkey.

The man hurriedly separates his bank-book from the letters.  He displays the fresh and legible name of Robert Chalmers on the bank-book.