"Come in, Hill; come in," said the banker. "Close the door--and lock it." "The clerks are gone, sir; the last has just left," was the reply. But the old man nevertheless turned the key of the door. Mr. Peter Castlemaine pointed to a seat close to him; and his clerk, quiet in all his movements, as in the tones of his voice, took it in silence. For a full minute they looked at each other; Thomas Hill's face reflecting the uneasiness of his master's. He was the first to speak. "I know it, sir," he said, his manner betraying the deepest respect and sympathy. "I have seen it coming for a long while. So have you, sir. Why have you not confided in me before?" "I could not," breathed Mr. Peter Castlemaine. "I wanted to put it from me, Hill, as a thing that could never really be. It has never come so near as it has come now, Hill; it has never been so real as at this moment of outspoken words." "It was not my place to take the initiative, sir; but I was wishing always that you would speak to me. I could but place facts and figures before you and point to results, compare past balances with present ones, other years' speculations with last year's, and--and give you the opportunity of opening the subject with me. But you never would open it." "I have told you why, Hill," said Peter Castlemaine. "I strove to throw the whole trouble from me. It was a weak, mistaken feeling; nine men out of every ten would have been actuated by it under similar circumstances. And yet," he continued, half in soliloquy, "I never was much like other men, and I never knew myself to be weak." "Never weak; never weak," responded the faithful clerk, affectionately. "I don't know, Hill; I feel so now. This has been to me long as a far-off monster, creeping onwards by degrees, advancing each day by stealthy steps more ominously near: and now it is close at hand, ready to crush me." "I seem not to understand it," said poor Hill. "And there are times when I cannot," returned Mr. Peter Castlemaine. "In the old days, sir, everything you handled turned to gold. You had but to take up a speculation, and it was sure to prove a grand success. Why, sir, your name has become quite a proverb for luck. If Castlemaine the banker's name is to it, say people of any new undertaking, it must succeed. But for some time past things have changed, and instead of success, it has been failure. Sir, it is just as though your hand had lost its cunning." "Right, Hill," sighed his master, "my hand seems to have lost its cunning. It is--I have said it over and over again to myself--just as though some curse pursued me. Ill-luck; nothing but ill-luck! If a scheme has looked fair and promising to-day, a blight has fallen on it to-morrow. And I, like a fool, as I see now, plunged into fresh ventures, hoping to redeem the last one. How few of us are there who know how to pull up in time! Were all known the public would say that the mania of gambling must have taken hold of me----"