Hitherto there had been no failures in Milton; but, from the immense speculations that had come to light in making a bad end in America, and yet nearer home, it was known that some Milton houses of business must suffer so severely that every day men’s faces asked, if their tongues did not, ’What news?  Who is gone?  How will it affect me?’ And if two or three spoke together, they dwelt rather on the names of those who were safe than dared to hint at those likely, in their opinion, to go; for idle breath may, at such times, cause the downfall of some who might otherwise weather the storm; and one going down drags many after.  ‘Thornton is safe,’ say they.  ’His business is large—­extending every year; but such a head as he has, and so prudent with all his daring!’ Then one man draws another aside, and walks a little apart, and, with head inclined into his neighbour’s ear, he says, ’Thornton’s business is large; but he has spent his profits in extending it; he has no capital laid by; his machinery is new within these two years, and has cost him—­we won’t say what!—­a word to the wise!’ But that Mr. Harrison was a croaker,—­a man who had succeeded to his father’s trade-made fortune, which he had feared to lose by altering his mode of business to any having a larger scope; yet he grudged every penny made by others more daring and far-sighted.

But the truth was, Mr. Thornton was hard pressed.  He felt it acutely in his vulnerable point—­his pride in the commercial character which he had established for himself.  Architect of his own fortunes, he attributed this to no special merit or qualities of his own, but to the power, which he believed that commerce gave to every brave, honest, and persevering man, to raise himself to a level from which he might see and read the great game of worldly success, and honestly, by such far-sightedness, command more power and influence than in any other mode of life.  Far away, in the East and in the West, where his person would never be known, his name was to be regarded, and his wishes to be fulfilled, and his word pass like gold.  That was the idea of merchant-life with which Mr. Thornton had started.  ’Her merchants be like princes,’ said his mother, reading the text aloud, as if it were a trumpet-call to invite her boy to the struggle.  He was but like many others—­men, women, and children—­alive to distant, and dead to near things.  He sought to possess the influence of a name in foreign countries and far-away seas,—­to become the head of a firm that should be known for generations; and it had taken him long silent years to come even to a glimmering of what he might be now, to-day, here in his own town, his own factory, among his own people.  He and they had led parallel lives—­very close, but never touching—­till the accident (or so it seemed) of his acquaintance with Higgins.  Once brought face to face, man to man, with an individual of the masses around him, and (take notice) out of the character of master and workman, in the first