In an instant Winny was kneeling, and Theodore's whole soul was being poured out in prayer for those two. A moment and then Pliny, in low, hoarse voice said: "Lord, help me; I am sinking in deep waters." And Winny added: "Savior of my mother, I am sick of sin; take me out of myself and into thee." When they arose Theodore stole quietly from the room and left them alone. He went up to his own closet and prayed such prayer of thanksgiving as was recorded in heaven that night, and the angels around the throne had great joy. * * * * * Not yet were the shocks and changes coming to these households over. Not two weeks had the millionaire been sleeping his last sleep, when there burst like a bombshell on the business world the startling news that his millions had vanished into vapor, or perhaps it would be speaking more properly to say into poison. Strange, wild speculations, that the acute, far-sighted business man would never have touched for a moment had he been himself, had been entered into while his brain was struggling with the fumes of brandy. Notes had been signed, sales had been made and debts contracted upon an enormous scale; in short, the whole business was in a bewildering entanglement. "There won't be five thousand dollars left out of the whole immense property," said Edgar Ryan, one of the lawyers in charge, at the close of a confidential conversation with Theodore, and Theodore, like the rest of the world, stood for a little stunned and aghast over this new calamity. "I never saw such a tangle in all my days," continued Ryan, earnestly. "The amount of property shipwrecked is almost incredible. The man was never intoxicated in his life, and yet it may be truthfully said of him that he has let rum swallow all his millions. I tell you, Mallery, you and Habakkuk were undoubtedly correct." Theodore turned and walked soberly and wearily away. He had not the heart just then to smile over the memory of anything. There followed weary, anxious, harassing days--days in which Pliny remained doggedly behind the counter, and Theodore almost entirely ignored the store, and gave himself up to following the footsteps of appraisers and auctioneers and policemen, and in trying to shield Mrs. Hastings and Dora, for the red flag floated out from the grand mansion proudly known for years as Hastings' Hall. Oh change! Can anything in all time be compared in swiftness and sharpness and terror to that monster who swoops down upon our hearts and homes, and almost in the twinkling of an eye leaves them desolate? Oh heaven! With all its glories and its joys, can anything in all the bright description equal in peace and rest and comfort that one precious sentence which admits of no thought of change: "And they shall reign forever and ever?"