Meanwhile, Vinal was being goaded into recklessness, frightened out of his propriety, haunted, devil-driven, maddened into desperate courses. Late one night, he was pacing his library, with a quick, disordered step. His servants were in their beds, excepting a man, nodding his drowsy vigil over the kitchen fire. Vinal's affairs were fast drawing to a crisis. A few weeks must determine the success or failure of a broad scheme of fraud, on which he had staked his fortunes and himself, and whose issues would sink him to disgrace and ruin, or lift him for a time to the pinnacle of a knave's prosperity. But, meanwhile, how to keep his head above water! Claims thickened upon him; he was meshed in a network of perplexities; and, with him, bankruptcy would involve far more than a loss of fortune. There was a ring at the door bell. Vinal stopped short in his feverish walk, raised his head with a startled motion, and listened like a fox who hears the hounds. His instinct foreboded the worst. His cheek flushed, and his eye brightened, not with spirit, but with desperation. The bell rang again. This time, the sleepy servant roused himself. Vinal heard his step along the hall; heard the opening of the street door, and a man's voice pronouncing his name. The moment after, his evil spirit stood before him, in the shape of Henry Speyer. Vinal gave him no time to speak, but shutting the door in the servant's face, turned upon his visitor with such courage as a cat will show when a bulldog has driven her into a corner. "Again! Are you here again? It is hardly a month since you were here last. What have you done with what I gave you then? Do you think I am made of gold? Do you take me for a bank that you can draw on at will?" "I am sorry to trouble you so soon, but I am very hard pressed." "Hard pressed! So am I hard pressed. Here for a year and more I have been supporting you in your extravagance--you and your mistresses; you have been living on me like princes,--dress, drinking, feasting, horses, gambling!--among you, you make my money spin away like water. Every well has a bottom to it, and you have got to the bottom of mine." Speyer laughed with savage incredulity. "Any thing in reason I am ready to do for you; but it's of no use. More! more! is always the word. You think you have found a gold mine. You mistake. Here I have a note due to-morrow; and another on Monday--that was for money I borrowed to give you. Heaven knows how I shall pay them. Go back, and come again a month from this." "It won't do. I must have it now." "I tell you, I have none to give you." "Do you see this?" said Speyer, producing a roll of printed papers, and giving one to Vinal. It was Vinal's letter, in the form of a placard, with a statement of the whole affair prefixed. Speyer had had it printed secretly in New York, the names of Morton and Vinal being left blank, and ingeniously filled in by himself with a pen.