The ruin which impended over the unlucky speculator was not immediate,
but it was not far off; the shadow of it already wrapped him in a
twilight obscurity. His repute as a clever and a safe man had left him.
He was described now as a daring man; and the wiseacres shook their heads
as they talked of him.
"One of the next to go will be Sheldon," said the wiseacres; but in these
days of commercial epidemic there was no saying who would be the first to
go. It was the end of the world in little. One was taken, and another
left. The Gazette overran its customary column like a swollen river, and
flooded a whole page of the Times newspaper; and men looked to the lists
of names in the Wednesday and Saturday papers as to the trump of
archangels sounding the destruction of the universe.
For some time the bark in which Mr. Sheldon had breasted those turbulent
waters had been made of paper. This was nothing. Paper boats were the
prevailing shipping in those waters; but Captain Sheldon's bark needed
refitting, and the captain feared a scarcity of paper, or, worse still,
the awful edict issued from some commercial Areopagus that for him there
should be no more paper.
Once before, Mr. Sheldon had found himself face to face with ruin
complete and irredeemable. When all common expedients had been exhausted,
and his embarrassments had become desperate, he had found a desperate
expedient, and had extricated himself from those embarrassments.
Pages:
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263