The older man put his hand to his head. “Did I?” he asked half absently. “I suppose I must have, if you sent one. I--I think I haven’t been quite responsible since I telegraphed you. You saw what is going on out in the bank; it has been that way since day before yesterday. I waited as long as I dared. I knew it would be a shock to you, and I--I didn’t want to shock you, son.” David Vallory placed a chair for himself at the desk end and felt mechanically for his pipe and tobacco. Disaster was plainly in the air and he prepared himself to meet it. “When you’re ready, Dad,” he said. Adam Vallory sank into his chair. There was a bit of string on the desk and he picked it up and began aimlessly to untie the knots in it. “I wasn’t sure you’d come; I didn’t know whether you could come. It isn’t fair to take you away from your work; but----” “Of course, I’d come!” David broke in warmly. “I’m here to take hold with you, and you must remember that there are two of us now. What has gone wrong?” Adam Vallory shook his head sadly. “The thing that went wrong dates back to a time before you were born, David; to the time when I allowed your grandfather, and some others, to persuade me that I ought to make a business man of myself. That was a mistake; a very sorry mistake. I haven’t been a good banker.” David shook his head in honest filial deprecation. “You have been the best and kindest of fathers to Lucille and me, and that counts for much more than being a successful money-grabber. And you’ve earned the love and respect of everybody worth while in Middleboro. What is the present trouble? Are you having a run on the bank?” “I suppose you wouldn’t call it a run, as yet. There is no special excitement and the people are very quiet and orderly. But there have been a great many withdrawals, and there will doubtless be more. If it should come to a real run----” “Let me have it all,” the son encouraged, when the pause grew over-long. “Do you mean that the bank isn’t solvent?” “It is not,” was the low-toned rejoinder, given without qualification. “I have made a number of bad loans. So long as I had to deal only with neighbors and friends, men whom I have known and trusted all my life, I got along fairly well, though the bank has never earned much more than the family living, as you know. But when the town began to grow and the factories came in the conditions were changed--for me. Then Mugridge started the Middleboro National, and that was the beginning of the end. He took his pick of the new customers and let me have the fag ends. The Stove Works went into bankruptcy a week ago, and that was the last straw.” “You were carrying Carnaby, of the Stove Works?” David asked.