“Seven thousand dollars!”

“Yes.”

“How in the name of wonder did it come into your possession?”

“I took it from Dalton at a tempting discount.”

“From Dalton!  Then his name is on the paper?”

“No, I hold it without recourse.”

“What folly!  How could you have done such a thing?”

“I believed Eldridge to be perfectly good.  Dalton said that he was in the way of making a fortune.”

“Why, then, was he anxious to part with his paper without recourse?”

“It was, he alleged, on account of ill-health.  He wished to close up all his business and make an investment of what little he possessed previous to going south, in the hope that a change of air would brace up his shattered constitution.”

“It was all a lie—­the scoundrel!  His health is as good as mine.  A greater villain than he is does not walk the earth.  I wonder how you could have been so duped.”

“How do you think Eldridge’s affairs will turn out?” asked the young man.

“Worse than nothing, I suppose.  I understand that he paid Dalton some eighteen thousand dollars for his half of the business.  There was but ten thousand dollars capital at first; and, from the way things were conducted, instead of its increasing, it must have diminished yearly.”

Here was an entirely new aspect in the case.  Mr. Hueston’s self-complacency was gone; he knew how it would be with Eldridge from the first, but he didn’t know how it was going to be with himself.  He didn’t for a moment dream that when the fabric of the young man’s fortune came falling around him, that any thing belonging to him would be buried under the ruins.

“Too bad! too bad!” he ejaculated, as, under a sense of the utter desperation of the case, he struck his hands together, and then threw them above his head.  But it did no good to fret and scold, and blame his son-in-law; the error had been committed, and it was now too late to retrace a step.  Six or seven thousand dollars would inevitably be lost; and, as Williams had no capital, originally, of his own, the money would have to come out of his pocket.  The ruin of which the young man talked was more in his imagination than anywhere else, as Mr. Hueston was able enough to sustain him in his difficulty.

In the winding up of the affairs of Eldridge, who stopped payment on the day Williams announced to his father-in-law the fact that he held his notes, every thing turned out as badly as Mr. Hueston had predicted.  The unhappy young man was almost beside himself with trouble, mortification, and disappointment.  Not only had he lost every thing he possessed in the world; he was deeply involved in debt besides, and his good name was gone.  A marriage contract, into which he had entered, was broken off in consequence; the father of the lady demanding of him a release of the engagement in a way so insulting, that the young man flung insult back into his teeth, and never after went near his house.