"I tell you I'm going to get you out. I'm going back there, and get things in action, and I'm going to stay by them. I've got a good idea of these properties--and you hear me, now--I'll finish with a bank-roll that'll choke Red Bank Canyon." Fouts knocked and came in. "Now you go along up-town, Uncle Peter. I want a few minutes with Mr. Fouts, and I'll come to your place at seven." The old man arose dejectedly. "Don't let me interfere a minute with your financial operations. I'm too old a man to be around in folks' way." He slouched out with his head bent. A moment later Percival remembered his last words, also his reference to Blythe. He was seized with fear for what he might do in his despair. Uncle Peter would act quickly if his mind had been made up. He ran out into Wall Street, and hurried up to Broadway. A block off on that crowded thoroughfare he saw the tall figure of Uncle Peter turning into the door of a saloon. He might have bought poison. He ran the length of the block and turned in. Uncle Peter stood at one end of the bar with a glass of creamy beer in front of him. At the moment Percival entered he was enclosing a large slab of Swiss cheese between two slices of rye bread. He turned and faced Percival, looking from him to his sandwich with vacant eyes. "I'm that wrought up and distressed, son, I hardly know what I'm doin'! Look at me now with this stuff in my hands." "I just wanted to be sure you were all right," said Percival, greatly relieved. "All right," the old man repeated. "All right? My God,--ruined! There's nothin' left to do now." He looked absently at the sandwich, and bit a generous semicircle into it. "I don't see how you can eat, Uncle Peter. It's so horrible!" "I don't myself; it ain't a healthy appetite--can't be--must be some kind of a fever inside of me--I s'pose--from all this trouble. And now I've come to poverty and want in my old age. Say, son, I believe there's jest one thing you can do to keep me from goin' crazy." "Name it, Uncle Peter. You bet I'll do it!" "Well, it ain't much--of course I wouldn't expect you to do all them things you was jest braggin' about back there--about goin' to work the properties and all that--you would do it if you could, I know--but it ain't that. All I ask is, don't play this Wall Street game any more. If we can save out enough by good luck to keep us decently, so your ma won't have to take boarders, why, don't you go and lose that, too. Don't mortgage the One Girl. I may be sort of superstitious, but somehow, I don't believe Wall Street is your game. Course, I don't say you ain't got a game--of some kind--but I got one of them presentiments that it ain't Wall Street." "I don't believe it is, Uncle Peter--I won't touch another share, and I won't go near Shepler again. We'll keep the One Girl." He called a cab for the old man, and saw him started safely off up-town.