CHAPTER XIV.

WHICH TELLS OF A GREAT PUBLIC MEETING IN SEVENOAKS, THE BURNING IN EFFIGY OF MR. BELCHER, AND THAT GENTLEMAN’S INTERVIEW WITH A REPORTER.

Mr. Balfour, in his yearly journeys through Sevenoaks, had made several acquaintances among the citizens, and had impressed them as a man of ability and integrity; and, as he was the only New York lawyer of their acquaintance, they very naturally turned to him for information and advice.  Without consulting each other, or informing each other of what they had done, at least half a dozen wrote to him the moment Mr. Belcher was out of the village, seeking information concerning the Continental Petroleum Company.  They told him frankly about the enormous investments that they and their neighbors had made, and of their fears concerning the results.  With a friendly feeling toward the people, he undertook, as far as possible, to get at the bottom of the matter, and sent a man to look up the property, and to find the men who nominally composed the Company.

After a month had passed away and no dividend was announced, the people began to talk more freely among themselves.  They had hoped against hope, and fought their suspicions until they were tired, and then they sought in sympathy to assuage the pangs of their losses and disappointments.

It was not until the end of two months after Mr. Belcher’s departure that a letter was received at Sevenoaks from Mr. Balfour, giving a history of the Company, which confirmed their worst fears.  This history is already in the possession of the reader, but to that which has been detailed was added the information that, practically, the operations of the Company had been discontinued, and the men who formed it were scattered.  Nothing had ever been earned, and the dividends which had been disbursed were taken out of the pockets of the principals, from moneys which they had received for stock.  Mr. Belcher had absorbed half that had been received, at no cost to himself whatever, and had added the grand total to his already bulky fortune.  It was undoubtedly a gross swindle, and was, from the first, intended to be such; but it was under the forms of law, and it was doubtful whether a penny could ever be recovered.

Then, of course, the citizens held a public meeting—­the great panacea for all the ills of village life in America.  Nothing but a set of more or less impassioned speeches and a string of resolutions could express the indignation of Sevenoaks.  A notice was posted for several days, inviting all the resident stockholders in the Continental to meet in council, to see what was to be done for the security of their interests.

The little town-hall was full, and, scattered among the boisterous throng of men, were the pitiful faces and figures of poor women who had committed their little all to the grasp of the great scoundrel who had so recently despoiled and deserted them.