Taking leave of Mr. O’Scarum and Major O’Dogskin, they continued their wandering as choice or chance directed: sometimes penetrating into the most sequestered valleys; sometimes returning into the principal roads, and investigating the most populous districts. Passing through the town of Gullgudgeon, they found an immense crowd assembled in a state of extreme confusion, exhibiting every symptom of hurry, anxiety, astonishment, and dismay. They stopped to inquire the cause of the tumult, and found it to proceed from the sudden explosion of a paper-mill, in other words, the stoppage of the country bank of Messieurs Smokeshadow, Airbubble, Hopthetwig, and Company. Farmers, bumpkins, artisans, mechanics, tradesmen of all descriptions, the innkeeper, the lawyer, the doctor, and the parson; soldiers from the adjoining barracks, and fishermen from the neighbouring coast, with their shrill-voiced and masculine wives, rolled in one mass, like a stormy wave, around a little shop, of which the shutters were closed, with the word BANK in golden letters over the door, and a large board on the central shutter, notifying that ‘Messieurs Smokeshadow, Airbubble, Hopthetwig, and Company had found themselves under the disagreeable necessity of suspending their payments’; in plain English, had found it expedient to fly by night, leaving all the machinery of their mill, and all the treasures of their mine, that is to say, several reams of paper, half a dozen account-books, a desk, a joint-stool, and inkstand, a bunch of quills, and a copper-plate, to satisfy the claims of the distracted multitude, who were shoaling in from all quarters, with _promises to pay_, of the said Smokeshadow, Airbubble, Hopthetwig, and Company, to the amount of a hundred thousand pounds. Mr. Fax addressed himself for an explanation of particulars to a plump and portly divine, who was standing at a little distance from the rest of the crowd, and whose countenance exhibited no symptoms of the rage, grief, and despair which were depicted on the physiognomies of his dearly beloved brethren of the town of Gullgudgeon. ‘You seem, sir,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘to bear the general calamity with Christian resignation.’ ‘I do, sir,’ said the reverend gentleman, ‘and for a very orthodox reason—I have none of their notes—not I. I was obliged to take them now and then against my will, but I always sent them off to town, and got cash for them directly.’ ‘You mean to say,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘you got a Threadneedle Street note for them.’ ‘To be sure, sir,’ said the divine, ‘and that is the same thing as cash. There is a Jacobin rascal in this town, who says it is a bad sign when the children die before the parent, and that a day of reckoning must come sooner or later for the old lady as well as for her daughters; but myself and my brother magistrates have taken measures for him, and shall soon make the town of Gullgudgeon too hot to hold him, as sure as my name is Peppertoast.’