Worse, and far more important, than this matter was the fact that stocks and shares continued to fall all that week. Night after night the arrival of the famous “Wonder,” the fast coach which did the journey from London in fifteen hours, was awaited by men who thought nothing of the wintry weather if they might have the latest news. Afternoon after afternoon the journals brought by the mail were fought for and opened in the street by men whose faces grew longer as the week ran on. Some strode up jauntily, and joined themselves to the group of loungers before the coach-office, while others sneaked up privily, went no farther than the fringe of the crowd, and there, gravitating together by twos and threes, conferred in low voices over prices and changes. Some, until the coach arrived, lurked in a neighboring churchyard, raised above the street, and glancing suspiciously at one another affected to be immersed in the study of crumbling gravestones; while a few made a pretence of being surprised, as they passed, by the arrival of the mail, or hiding themselves in doorways appeared only at the last moment, and when they believed that they might do so unobserved. One thing was noticeable of nearly all these; that they avoided one another’s eyes, as if, declining to observe others, they became themselves unseen. Once possessed of the paper they behaved in different ways, according as they were of a sanguine or despondent nature. Some tore the sheet open at once, devoured a particular column and stamped or swore, or sometimes flung the paper underfoot. Others sneaked off to the churchyard or to some neighboring nook, and there, unable to wait longer, opened the journal with shaking fingers; while a few—and these perhaps had the most at stake—dared not trust themselves to learn the news where they might by any chance be overlooked, but hurried homewards through “shuts” and by-lanes, and locked themselves in their offices, afraid to let even their wives come near them. For the news was very serious to very many; the more so as, inexperienced in speculation, they clung for the most part to the hope of a recovery, and could not bring themselves to sell at a lower figure than that which they might have got a week before. Much less could they bring themselves to sell at an actual loss. They had sat down to play a winning game, and they could not now believe that the seats were reversed, and that they were liable to lose all that they had gained, nay, in many cases much more than their stake. Amazed, they saw stocks falling, crumbling, nay, sinking to a nominal value, while large calls on them remained to be paid, and loans on them to be repaid. No wonder that they stared aghast, or that many after a period of stupefaction, at a state of things so new and so paralyzing, began to feel that it was neck or nothing with them, and bought when they should have sold, seeing that in any case the price to which stock was falling meant their ruin.