Nothing did Jones more harm than this assertion, and the knowledge that it was a literal truth; for though people worship cheapness, that goddess of modern commerce, it is only on condition that she shall be a reality, not a fiction; that she shall rest on the solid basis of gains, howsoever small; not on the sand foundation of loss, that certain forerunner of failure. Jones could not, of course, long keep up the plan of selling under cost; he was obliged to give it up. With it, ceased his fallacious and momentary prosperity. "I thought so," soliloquized Saunders. Reader, if you think that we mean to cast a stone at the great shop, you are mistaken. We deal not with pitiless political economy, with its laws, with their workings. The great shop must prosper; 'tis in the nature of things; and the little shop must perish--'tis in their nature too. We but lament this sad truth, that on God's earth, which God made for all, there should be so little room for the poor man; for his pride, his ambition, his desires, which he has in common with the rich man; we but deplore what all, alas! know too well; that the crown of creation, a soul, a man by God's Almighty mind, fashioned and called forth into being, by Christ's priceless blood purchased and redeemed to Heaven, should be a thing of so little worth--ay, so much, so very much less worth than some money, in this strange world of ours. Few pitied Richard Jones in his fall. His little ambition was remembered as a crime; for success had not crowned it. His little vanities were so many deadly sins; for gold did not hide or excuse them. To the dregs, the unhappy man drank the latter draught which rises to the lips of the fallen, when they see the world deserting them to worship a rival. A usurper had invaded his narrow realm, and crushed him; his little story was a true page from that great book of History, which we need not read to know how power decays, or to learn of man's fickleness, and fortune's frowns. Alas! History, if we did but know it, lies around us, as mankind lives in the meanest wretch we meet, and perchance despise. It is a bitter thing to behold our own ruin; it is a cruel thing to look on powerless and despairing; and both now fell to the lot of Richard Jones. He had ventured all, and lost all. He was doomed--he knew it; every one knew it. But, alas! the cup of his woes was not full. Mary had always been delicate. One chill evening she took cold; a cough settled on her chest; sometimes it seemed gone, then suddenly it returned again. "She felt very well," she said; and, strange to say, her father thought so too. Rachel was the first to see that something was wrong. "Mary," she said to her, one morning, "what ails you? Your breath seems quite short." "La! bless you, Miss," replied Mary, in her patronizing way, "I am all right."