Weeks passed and no answer to this demand was received.  In the meantime, another crisis in the affairs of Mr. Howland was rapidly approaching.  Unless aid were received from some quarter, he must sink utterly prostrate under the pressure that was upon him, and again fail to meet the honorable engagements that he had made.  When that crisis came, he would fall to rise no more.

Ten days only remained, and then there would come a succession of payments, amounting in all to over five thousand dollars.  To meet these payments unaided, would be impossible; and there was no one now to aid the reduced and sinking merchant.  There was not a friend to whom he could go for aid so substantial as was now required, for most of his business friends had already suffered to some extent by his failure, and were not in the least inclined to risk anything farther on one whose position was known to be extremely doubtful.

The nearer this second crisis came, and the more distinctly Mr. Howland was able to see its painful features, the more did his heart shrink from encountering a disaster that would involve all his worldly affairs in hopeless ruin.

In this strait, the mind of Mr. Howland kept turning, involuntarily, toward his son Edward, as toward the only resource left him on the earth; but ever as it turned thus, something in him revolted at the idea, and he strove to push it from his thoughts.  He could not do this, however, for it was the straw on the surface of the waters in which he felt himself sinking.

Painfully, and with a sense of deep humiliation, did Mr. Howland at length bring himself up to the point of writing again to his son.  As everything depended on the effect of this second letter, he went down into a still lower deep of humiliation, and after representing in the most vivid colors the extremity to which he was reduced, begged him, if a spark of humanity remained in his bosom, to send him the aid he needed.

With a trembling hope did the father wait, day after day, for an answer to this letter.  Time passed on, and the ninth day since its transmission came and yet there was no reply.

Nervously anxious was Mr. Howland on the morning of the tenth day, for if no help came then, it was all over with him.  His note for fifteen hundred dollars fell due, and must be lifted ere the stroke of three, or the end with him had come.

A few mouthfuls of food were taken at breakfast, and then Mr. Howland hurried away to the Post Office, his heart fluttering with fear and expectation.  A few moments, and he would know his fate.  As he came in sight of the long row of boxes, his eyes glanced eagerly toward the one in which his letters were filed up.  There was something in it.  In a tone of forced composure, he called out the number of his box, and received from the clerk two letters.  He glanced at the post-mark of one, and read—­“New York,” and at the other, and saw—­“Boston.”  For a moment or two his breath was suspended, and his knees smote together.  Then he moved away, slowly, with such a pressure on his feelings that the weight was reproduced on his physical system, and he walked with difficulty.