Colonel Royall ran his fingers through his thick white hair. “Pretty much all, William,” he said mechanically; “the place here is free, unmortgaged, I mean, and I reckon I can hold the property in Virginia, but the rest--” He raised his hands with a significant and pathetic gesture; he had fine old hands, and they had saved and directed from his youth up until now--to this end! To have trusted too deeply to an unworthy relative. William Cheyney leaned back in his chair; the awful actuality of the calamity was borne in upon him, and he remembered, even at that moment, his feeling of confidence in the stability of Colonel Royall’s fortune, though, sometimes, he had doubted the colonel’s money sense. There was sometimes, too, a terrible synchronism between ruin and mental collapse. He looked keenly at the old man before him, who seemed suddenly shrunken and gray, and he was troubled by the absent expression of the mild blue eyes; it was almost a look of vacancy. He laid his hand tenderly on the other’s arm. “Davy, man,” he said, “cheer up; there are worse things than financial losses.” The colonel recalled himself apparently from very distant scenes and gazed at him reproachfully. “No one can know that better than I,” he said, with a touch of bitterness. The doctor stretched out his hand with a bowed head. “Forgive me, David,” he said simply. “There’s nothing to forgive,” replied Colonel Royall. “I let you say things, William, that other men could not say to me. But this is a bitter hour; my youth was not idle, I never knew an idle day, and I laid up a fortune in place of my father’s competence; I wanted to spend my old age in peace, and I trusted my affairs to a rogue. By gum, I hate to call my cousin’s son a rascal, but it seems he is! Not half the burden, though, lies in my own loss; it’s the thought of all these poor people he has ruined. Women and girls and old men who had savings--all gone in the Eaton Investment Company. What was it Caleb Trench stated about that company? It seems as if I couldn’t understand it all, I’m--I’m dizzy!” The colonel touched his forehead apprehensively. The doctor regarded him thoughtfully over his spectacles, but he made no reservations. “Well, there isn’t any investment company; that’s about the size of it, David,” he said reluctantly. “People bought their shares and got--waste paper. They say Jacob used lots of the money campaigning; it isn’t charged that he wanted it for himself.” “I’ve always held that blood was thicker than water,” said Colonel Royall, “and Jacob is a thief--a thief, sir!” he added, putting aside an interruption from the doctor with a wide sweep of the hand. “He’s robbed hundreds in this State because his name, his family, stood for honesty, business reputation, honor--and once I thought him fit to be my confidant!”