A month after the intelligence of this loss came, he received account sales of ten thousand barrels of flour, shipped to Montevideo, where very high prices had ruled in the market for some months. He expected to make from five to ten thousand dollars by the shipment. But the arrival of half a dozen ship loads of flour, simultaneously with his own, had knocked down the price, and he lost by the adventure over twelve thousand dollars. As a remittance, his consignees sent, in part, a cargo of cocoa, upon which there was another loss; not of much consequence in amount, but serious as to the effect produced upon the merchant’s mind. Hitherto, almost every commercial enterprise had been successful. All his previous losses did not amount to twenty thousand dollars, and now, in the space of little over a month, he had seen nearly fifty thousand dollars pass from his hands, without even the opportunity of an effort to save it. And the worst of it was, he could blame no one. The ship had been wrecked in a storm. Previously, the supercargo had sent by the first vessel that sailed, after he had determined upon the nature of his return cargo, all the information necessary for purposes of insurance. But the winds and the waves had retarded her progress until after the news of the wreck came. If the loss had been the effects of clearly apparent human errors or inefficiency, Mr. Townsend would have felt less disturbed about it; for greater care on his own part, or a nicer discrimination in the selection of his agents, would prevent a recurrence of like events in future. But the satisfaction of mind such a reflection would have produced, he was not permitted to have. For months after this, nothing but ill-luck attended Mr. Townsend’s shipping interests. After this, followed several losses through the failure of old customers, whose solvency, not only he, but every one else, considered undoubted. During a single year, his riches, to the amount of over seventy thousand dollars, took to themselves wings and flew away, beyond the reach of recovery. In spite of every effort to put away from his mind the intruding recollection of what Mr. Carlton had said about the nothingness of human prudence, the prominent features of the conversation he had held with the clergyman were continually forcing themselves upon him, and impressing him with a sense of his own powerlessness never felt before.