And then he exhibited to Ellison a series of estimates and calculations based upon things actually done, which fully proved all he said. “Had the mill been erected on your land, you might have saved yourself. But, to cut the timber, and then haul it two miles, makes the cost of each log so great as to throw profit entirely out of the question. I think, sir, that you had better sell your mill, if you can find a purchaser.” Ellison was confounded. The demonstration made by his overseer was so accurate that there was no possibility of gainsaying it. To go on, even if he had the money with which to proceed, would, he saw, be only an act of folly. He, therefore, after debating the matter for some days, saw that there was no way left for him but to discharge all in his employment, and sell the mill if a purchaser could be found. The sale he did not find a matter of easy accomplishment. He advertised it far and near, but only a few came to look at it, and they were not long in making up their minds that the road to fortune did not lie in that direction. In the meantime, the first note of one thousand dollars given to Claxton fell due, and was permitted to lie over. Ellison had not fifty dollars in cash left of the five thousand obtained from the sale of stocks, and how could he lift a note of a thousand. He wrote to Claxton, upbraiding him as the willful instrument of his loss—as having made him the scape-goat to bear the burden of his own folly and miscalculation. To this he received a brief answer from Claxton’s brother, who said that the notes were now his property, and that he would wait until the three were matured, when, in case they were not all paid, he would foreclose the mortgage in his possession and sell his land. Unhappy young man! He was almost beside himself with anguish of mind. His castles in the air had all dissolved in storm-clouds. His confident pride in his own energy and ability to wrest a fortune from the elements around him was all gone. In the effort to make peace with his own mind—to secure his independence—by suddenly duplicating the value of the property obtained by his wife, he had lost nearly the whole of it in less than a year. His folly was the town talk. Not a man in D——, with whom he had conversed during the progress of his money-losing scheme, gave him a word of encouragement. Every one said that his expectations would prove fallacious; and now that all had occurred as predicted, the only sympathy he received was the pride-crushing remark that it had turned out as every one knew it would. The letter from Claxton’s brother awoke Ellison to a keener sense of the difficulty by which he was surrounded than he had yet experienced. There was no hope of selling his mill. It had already cost him about four thousand dollars, and three thousand were yet due. There was no escape from the payment of this last sum, as it was fully secured by a mortgage upon his land.