loadstar of success, though
many of his mates followed it afar, just before the shares dropped
below par.

Jim Tenny went with the rest. "Tell you what 'tis, Andrew, old man,"
he said, clapping Andrew on the shoulder as they were going out of
the shop one night, "you'd better go in too."

"The savings-bank is good enough for me," said Andrew, with his
gentle doggedness.

"You can buy a trotter," urged Jim.

"I never was much on trotters," replied Andrew.

"I ain't going to walk home many times more, you bet," Jim said to
Eva when he got home, and then he bent back her tensely set face and
kissed it. Eva was crocheting hoods for fifteen cents apiece for a
neighboring woman who was a padrone on a small scale, having taken a
large order from a dealer for which she realized twenty cents
apiece, and employed all the women in the neighborhood to do the
work.

"Why not?" said she.

"Oh," said Jim, gayly, "I've bought some of that 'Golden Hope'
mining stock. Billy Monroe has just made fifteen thousand on it, and
I'll make as much in a week or two."

"Oh, Jim, you 'ain't taken all the money out of the bank?"

"Don't you worry, old girl," replied Jim. "I guess you'll find I can
take care of you yet."

But the stock went down, and Jim's little venture with it.

"Guess you were about right, old man," he said to Andrew.

Andrew was rather looked up to for his superior caution and
sagacity. He was continually congratulated upon it. "Savings-banks
are good enough for me," he kept repeating. But that was four years
ago, and now his turn had come; the contagion of speculation had
struck him at last. That was the way with Lloyd's failing employes.

Andrew kept his stock certificate in a little, tin, trunk-shaped box
which had belonged to his father. It had a key and a tiny padlock,
and he had always stored in it the deed of his house, his
savings-bank book, and his insurance policy. He carried the key in
his pocket. Fanny never opened the box, or had any curiosity about
it, believing that she was acquainted with its contents; but now
when, on coming unexpectedly into the bedroom--the box was always
kept at the head of the bed--she heard a rattle of papers, and
caught Andrew locking the box with a confused air, she began to
suspect something. She began to look hard at the box, to take it up
and shake it when her husband was away. Fanny was crocheting hoods
as well as Eva. Ellen wished to learn, but her mother would not