"Think Madeleine will lose her love for you! You don't know the girl--not for one minute. Of course, everything is upside down, and of course there'll be bad blood. Mr. Eggleston is angry, but he'll get over it. What he has lost to-day he has made a dozen times over in his career in a single turn in stocks, and will again. Keep your head up! Finish your work at the office; pay every cent you owe; come back here and let me know if anything is left, and then we'll see Madeleine. You'll find my check-book in that desk at your elbow. I'll sign as many checks in blank as you want and you can fill them up at your leisure. We'll fight this thing out together and we'll win. Madeleine stop loving you! I'll stake my head she won't!" * * * * * Events move with great rapidity in the Street. When a tin case the size of a candle-box can be brought in by two men and a million of property dumped out on a table, an immediate accounting of assets is not difficult. Once their value is fixed by the referee they can be dealt to those interested as easily as a pack of cards. By noon of the following day not only did the firm of Philip Colton & Co. know exactly where they stood, but so did every one of the firm's creditors: Seventy per cent cash and thirty per cent in sixty days was the settlement. All their outside stocks had been closed out under the rule. Philip's thorough business methods and the simplicity and clearness with which his books had been kept made such an adjustment not only possible, but easy. The net result was the wiping out of the special capital of Philip's prospective father-in-law and all of his own capital and earnings. The junior partner was not affected; his allowance went on as usual. He did not even sell his stud; he bought another pony. His father gave him the money; it helped the family credit. So far not a word had come from Madeleine. Philip had rung the bell of the Eggleston mansion three times since that fatal morning and had been told by the butler in frigid tones that Miss Eggleston "was not at home." None of his notes were answered. That so sensible a girl as Madeleine, one whose whole nature was frankness and love, could be so cruel and so unjust was a disappointment more bitter than the failure. "She has been lied to by somebody," broke out Philip as he paced up and down Adam's studio, "or she is locked up where nothing can reach her. All my notes come back unopened; the last redirected by Mr. Eggleston himself. Neither he nor his son has been to the office since the settlement. They leave me to sweep up after them--dirty piece of business. Will there be any use in your seeing Mr. Eggleston?" Adam looked into space for a moment.