The young lawyer rose to his feet, a sickly, deferential smile playing along his straight lips.  Young aristocrats of Harry’s blood and breeding did not often darken Pawson’s door, and he was extremely anxious that his guest should in some way be made aware of his appreciation of that fact.  St. George did not move, nor did he take any other notice of the boy’s appearance than to fasten his eyes upon him for a moment in recognition of his presence.

But Harry could not wait.

“Todd has just told me, Uncle George, that”—­he caught the grave expression on Temple’s face—­“Why!—­Uncle George—­there isn’t anything the matter, is there?  It isn’t true that the—­”

St. George raised his head:  “What isn’t true, Harry?”

“That the Patapsco Bank is in trouble?”

“No, I don’t think so.  The bank, so far as I know, is all right; it’s the depositors who are in trouble,” and one of his quaint smiles lighted up his face.

“Broken!—­failed!” cried Harry, still in doubt as to the extent of the catastrophe, but wishing to be sympathetic and proportionably astounded as any well-bred young man should be when his best friend was unhappy.

“I’m afraid it is, Harry—­in fact I know it is—­bankrupt in character as well as in balances—­a bad-smelling, nasty mess, to tell you the truth.  That’s not only my own opinion, but the opinion of every man whom I have seen, and there was quite an angry mob when I reached the teller’s window this morning.  That is your own opinion also, is it not, Mr. Pawson?—­your legal summing up, I mean.”

The young attorney stretched out his spare colorless hands; opened wide his long, double-jointed fingers; pressed their ten little cushions together, and see-sawing the bunch in front of his concave waistcoat, answered in his best professional voice: 

“As to being bankrupt of funds I should say there was no doubt of that being their condition; as to any criminal intent or practices—­that, of course, gentlemen”—­and he shrugged his shoulders in a non-committal, non-actionable way—­“is not for me to decide.”

“But you think it will be months, and perhaps years, before the depositors get a penny of their money—­do you not?” persisted St. George.

Again Pawson performed the sleight-of-hand trick, and again he was non-committal—­a second shrug alone expressing his views, the performance ending by his pushing a wooden chair in the direction of Harry, who was still on his feet.

Harry settled himself on its edge and fixed his eyes on his uncle.  St. George again became absorbed in the several papers, Pawson once more assisting him, the visitor having now been duly provided for.