"To you the game--the great game!" she exclaimed softly. "And to me the waiting. But remember, one useless woman is watching across the water every move you make, and when the time comes that you want help, when you cannot go on alone--" [Illustration: "_When the time comes that you want help, when you cannot go on alone_--"] It sounded like woman's sentiment, and I interrupted jokingly:-- "When I am in the last ditch, cable you?" "Don't laugh at me! I am more earnest than you know. If that time comes--if you don't know which way to turn for help, if you have done _all_, and still--" We were standing beside a bandstand, and at that moment the music crashed out, flooding us with deafening sound. She pressed my hand, smiled, and turned away. I thought no more of her words then. But some weeks later, before the Drounds sailed for Europe, there came in my mail an envelope addressed in a woman's hand. Inside there was only another envelope, marked:-- "For the last ditch!" I tossed it into a drawer, rather annoyed by the silliness of it all. It was the first evidence of weakness I had ever detected in this intelligent woman. CHAPTER XVII NO GOSPEL GAME _Elementary lessons in finance--What is a panic?--The snake begins to show signs of life--An injunction of the court--Inquiries--Ed Hostetter knows our man--How to deal with a political judge--Slocum objects--My will prevails--The injunction is dissolved_ Sarah and I were sitting over our coffee one morning, six months after the Fair had closed its gates for the last time. Our second child, a little girl, was but a few weeks old, and this was the first morning that Sarah had breakfasted with me for some weeks. She had been glancing at the morning paper, and suddenly she looked up from it with wonder on her face. "The Tenth National Bank has failed. Isn't that Mr. Cross's bank?" I nodded. "Will the Crosses lose all their money?" "It's likely enough--what's left of it--all his and her folks', too." "Yesterday some one told me the Kentons were trying to sell their place at the lake. What does it mean? Why are people growing poor?" "It's the panic," I answered briefly. "Business has been getting worse and worse ever since the Fair. Some think it started with the Fair, but the trouble goes back of that." She put aside the paper and looked at me seriously. "Van, what is a panic?" It seemed strange that she should ask such a question in a simple, childish way. But she had been shut away from people and things of late, and it was not her nature to explore what was not right in her path. "A panic," I replied, finishing my coffee, "is hell! Now I must run and see what has happened to us." She looked at me in round-mouthed astonishment, and when I bent over to kiss her good-by, she said reprovingly: "You don't mean it could touch us, Van?" "It might," I smiled, thinking of the troubled waters where I was swimming. "We must trust Providence--" "And me."