"It may be a false rumour," said he; "I hope it is. But don't do anything in the shares until you know." A false rumour! When Oswald reached the offices he found it all too true a one. The secretary to the company, without meaning to do ill--indeed he had let it out in his lamentation--had unwittingly disclosed the fact of the previous irruption of water in the summer: and the excited crowd were going wild with anger. Many of them had bought their shares at a period subsequent to that. Oswald heard this, and went to Mr. Barker in the board-room. That gentleman, rather heated certainly, but with unchanged suavity of demeanour, was still doing his best to reassure everybody. Oswald drew him aside. "What a dreadful thing this is! What is the real truth of it?" "Hush!" interrupted Mr. Barker. "No need to tell the worst to them. You are one of us. I'm afraid it is all up with the mine; but we will keep it from them as long as we can. Anyway, it's no fault of ours." "What is it that they are saying about an irruption of water having occurred in the summer?" "Well, so it did," answered Mr. Barker, whose past few hours' temporising with the crowd caused him perhaps to throw off reserve to Mr. Oswald Cray as a welcome relief. "But it wasn't much, that; and we succeeded in keeping it dark." "Did Mark know of it?" "Mark know of it!" rejoined Barker; "of course he knew of it. What should hinder him? Why, the telegram bringing the news was given me at Mark's house; and, by the way, you were present, I remember. It was the evening that old doctor in the yellow trousers was there, with his two frights of daughters." The scene rose as in a mirror before Oswald's memory. Dr. Ford and his daughters, Miss Davenal and Sara, Caroline Cray in her silks and her beauty. He remembered the telegram, he remembered that it appeared to disturb both Barker and Mark; and he remembered Mark's denial to him that anything was amiss with the mine. "I do recollect it," he said aloud. "It struck me--perhaps it was rather singular it should do so--that something was wrong. Mark declared to me that it was not so." The words seemed to tickle Barker uncommonly. "Ah," said he, laughing, "Mark told me of it, and how he turned you off the scent. You'd not have put your thousand into it, perhaps, had you known of the water." "Perhaps not," quietly replied Oswald. "And my thousand was wanted, I suppose." "Law! you don't know the money that's been wanted," was the response. "And that irruption of water, slight as it was, made the demand for it worse. The mine has sucked it in like a sponge." Oswald made no answering remark. "I suppose this irruption is worse than that?" he presently observed. "Indeed I fear this is another thing altogether--ruin. But we ion% know anything certain until the post comes in this afternoon. We have had no letter yet." "How did the news of it come to you?"