The merchant returned to his counting-room, more undecided than when he went out, and feeling quite as deeply impressed with the idea that all was hopeless. The next thoughts that began to pervade his mind, were of his family. No one at home knew of the particular disposition that he had made of his property. His wife and daughters might hear of the failure of the Bank, without having their hearts filled with alarm, or dreaming that, in this event, was foreshadowed their fall from affluence to poverty. For the present, at least, he determined to keep them in ignorance of the approaching danger, while he watched the progress of events, and seized upon the first favorable opportunity to clutch, with a vigorous grasp, the remnant of his shattered fortune. To do one thing his mind was made up, and that was to sell so soon as there should be any thing like a settled state of the market, and the stock from a uniform quotation begin to decline in price. If there was an advance, he would hold on until there came appearance of depression, and then sell, and invest the proceeds in ground rents, the only security in which he had now a particle of faith. At last, the market became, to a certain extent, steady, but at appallingly low rates. Even at these Mr. Townsend felt disposed to sell, but every one said “No!” so emphatically, and so confidently predicted an advance, that he hesitated and delayed, day after day, week after week, and month after month, while the price still went down, until shares that had cost him from a dollar and ten cents to a dollar and twenty, were quoted at twenty cents nominally, and the tendency still downward. To describe Mr. Townsend’s state of mind during the few months that this steady decline in the price of shares continued, would be impossible. No man could be more wretched than he was. Carefully did he conceal from his family the condition of his affairs, fearing all the time to look his wife or daughters steadily in the face, lest they should read the truth in his eyes. In the mean time the precarious state of Mr. Townsend’s worldly affairs became pretty well known in business circles, and all manner of comments were made thereon. Every one could see and be astonished at his folly in withdrawing his capital from commerce, in which he had amassed a handsome fortune, and investing it in the stock of a single institution, whose very name was a fraud upon the community, and ought to have been a fact sufficiently conclusive to destroy all confidence in its safety. Many were the conversations held on the subject, much after this tenor: “Poor Townsend, I pity him.” “It’s more than I do, then. Any man who plays the fool, as he has, deserves to lose his money. I have no charity for him. He had made two or three hundred thousand dollars in fair, honest, regular trade, and not content with that, must sell his ships and go to speculating in western towns.” “He was certainly very indiscreet.”