“The devil take them! And you!” the gentleman cried, stung to fury. “Why, you swollen little frog!” losing all control over himself, “you don’t think my support worth buying, don’t you? You don’t think it’s worth a dirty hundred or two of your scrapings! Then I tell you I’ll put my foot on you—by G—d, I will! Yes! I’ll tread you down into the mud you sprang from! If you were a gentleman I’d shoot you on the Flash at eight o’clock to-morrow, and eat my breakfast afterwards! You to talk to me! You, you little spawn from the gutter! I’ve a good mind to thrash you within an inch of your life, but there’ll be those ready enough to do that for me by and by—ay, and plenty, by G—d!” He towered over the banker, and he looked threatening enough, but Ovington did not flinch. He went to the door and threw it open. “There’s the door, Mr. Acherley!” he said. For a moment the gentleman hesitated. But the banker’s firm front prevailed, and with a gesture, half menacing, half contemptuous, Acherley stalked out. “The worse for you!” he said. “You’ll be sorry for this! By George, you will be sorry for this next week!” “Good evening,” said the banker—he was trembling with passion. “I warn you to be careful what you say, or the law will deal with you.” And he stood his ground until the other, shrugging his shoulders and flinging behind him a last curse, had passed through the door. Then he closed the door and went back to the fireplace. He sat down. The matter was no surprise to him. He knew his man, and neither the demand nor the threat was unexpected. But he knew, too, that Acherley was shrewd, and that the demand and the threat were ominous signs. More forcibly than anything that had yet occurred, they brought before him the desperate nature of the crisis, and the likelihood that, before a week went by, the worst would happen. He would be compelled to put up the shutters. The bank would stop. And with the bank would go all that he had won by a life of continuous labor: the position that he had built up, the status that he had gained, the reputation that he had achieved, the fortune which he had won and which had so much exceeded his early hopes. The things with which he had surrounded himself, they too, tokens of his success, the outward and handsome signs of his rise in life, many of them landmarks, milestones on the path of triumph—they too would go. He looked sadly on them. He saw them, he too, under the hammer: saw the mocking, heedless crowd handling them, dividing them, jeering at his short-lived splendor, gibing at his folly in surrounding himself with them.