"The chosen few who thought that for once they could fleece the golden lamb driven quietly into a little corner for their own benefit, have come out leaving their own wool behind. We are speaking of the Golden Lamb Mine, which was to have been paraded in the market about the first of January, to lead astray with its deceptive glitter all who were foolish enough to believe without seeing. The few shares that had already been disposed of 'to strictly confidential friends,' by the shrewd managers of the concern, have gone down from five hundred dollars to five dollars, at which figure they went begging late in the afternoon yesterday, no one having confidence in a swindle so promptly and completely exposed." "Lola," it was Charles's voice, but so changed and broken that Mrs. Wheaton dropped the paper to look into his face. Lola sprang to his side, and he groped for her hand as though its slender strength could uphold the man who but an hour before looked able to move mountains from their place. Blindness seemed to have fallen on his eyes, for he repeated the call when the girl stood close beside him. "My darling," she murmured, seizing the hand that was still seeking hers, and, heedless of her mother's presence or her father's wild gestures, she pressed the icy fingers to her lips, breathing broken words of love and comfort into Charlie's ear. "Lola!" the name again rang through the room; it was her mother's cry, and the sharp terror in it struck like a knife to the girl's heart, "your father--quick! Would you kill him? Do you not see--he is dying! Oh, my child, my child, cast off everything, but do not load your soul with his death! God help me to guide you." There was something in the woman's eye that spoke of more than alarm at the symptoms of an approaching attack, such as she had always feared for the father of her children. She had never loved this man with the absorbing passion of which her heart was capable; but as she knelt by his side, giving him every aid in her power in a frenzied, hurried manner, so different from her usual placid ways, her wide-opened eyes seemed to look back through the shadows and mists of long, dreary years, and she spoke wildly and rapidly to her child. "Oh, Lola! don't blacken your soul with this crime--I too loaded the curse on me; I have borne it for years--and all the useless remorse, the vain, bitter regrets. Give up all you hold dear in life, but do not, do not try to find your way to happiness over the stricken form of your father!" Lola shook like a reed in the storm, and breaking away from Charlie she knelt by her mother's side. "Father!" she pleaded, "father, speak to me--call me your pet again--your dearest child; see me--I will never, never leave you, father, only speak to me once again." No one heeded Charlie, and he staggered from the house, muttering between his clinched teeth: "So they will all turn from me--and she was the first."