“And you knew all this before?” said Jordan.

“Certainly I did.  In fact, I built the saw-mill owned by Tompkins, and after sinking a couple of thousand dollars, was glad to get it off of my hands at any price.  Tompkins makes a living with it, and nothing more.  But then he is his own engineer, manager, clerk, and almost every thing else, and lives with the closest economy in his family—­much closer than you or I would like to live.”

“And you let me go on blindly and ruin myself, when a word from you might have saved me!”

There was something indignant in the young man’s manner.

“You didn’t consult me on the subject.  It is not my place to look after everybody’s business; I have enough to do to take care of my own concerns.”

Both were getting excited.  Jordan retorted still more severely, and then they parted in anger, each feeling that he had just cause to be offended.

On the next day, Jordan, who was too well satisfied that Mr. Page was right, stopped his mill, discharged his hands, and sold his oxen.  On looking over his accounts, he found that he was over a thousand dollars in debt:  In order to pay this, he sold the balance of his land, and then advertised his saw-mill for sale in all the county papers, and in the State Gazette.

Meantime, the suit which had been instituted on the note given to Barnaby came up for trial, and Jordan made an effort to defend it on the plea that value had not been received.  His fifty acres of land were gone, and all that remained of his six thousand dollars, were a half-weatherboarded, frame building, called a saw-mill, in which were a secondhand steam-engine, some rough gearing, and a few saws.  This stood in the centre of a small piece of ground—­perhaps the fourth of an acre—­upon which there was the moderate annual rent of one hundred dollars!  More than the whole building, leaving out the engine, would sell for.

After waiting for two months, and not receiving an offer for the mill, he sold the engine for a hundred and fifty dollars, and abandoned the old frame building in which it had stood, to the owner of the land for rent, on condition of his cancelling the lease, that had still three years and a half to run.

His defence of the suit availed nothing.  Judgment was obtained upon the note, an execution issued, and, as there was no longer any property in the young man’s possession, his person was seized and thrown into the county prison.

From the time old Mr. Page considered himself insulted by Jordan, all intercourse between them had ceased.  The latter had not considered himself free to visit any longer at his house, and therefore no meeting between him and Edith had taken place for three months.

The cause of so sudden a cessation of her lover’s visits, all unknown to Edith, was a great affliction to the maiden.  Her father noticed that her countenance wore a troubled aspect, and that she scarcely tasted food when at the table.  This did not, in any way, lessen the number of his self-reproaches for having suffered a young man to ruin himself, when a word from him might have saved him.