mining speculation out in Colorado; there was Mr.
Argenter's signature for heavy security; there were memoranda of
good safe stocks that had stood in his name a little while ago, and
no certificates; there had been sales and sacrifices; going in
deeper and to more certain loss, because of risk and danger already
run.

Mr. Sherrett, senior, came home to dinner one day with news from
the street.

"I've been very sorry to hear this morning that Argenter left things
in a bad way, after all. There won't be much of anything
forthcoming. All swallowed up in mines and lands that have gone
under. That explains the sunstroke. Half the cases are mere worry
and drive. In the old, calm times it was scarcely heard of. Now, of
a hot summer's day in New York, a hundred or two men drop down. And
then they talk of unprecedented heat. It is the heat and the ferment
that have got into life."

"Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish," said the quiet
voice of Aunt Euphrasia. "How strange it is that men have never
interpreted yet!"

"Ah, well! I'm not sure about sins and judgments. I don't undertake
to blame," said Mr. Sherrett. "People are born into a whirl,
nowadays,--the mass of them. How can they help it?"

"I don't know. But we begin to see how true the words were, and in
what pity they must have been spoken," said Aunt Euphrasia.
"Tremendous physical forces have been grasped and set to work for
mere material ends. Spiritual uses and living haven't kept pace. And
so there is a terrible unbalance, and the tower falls upon men's
heads."

"Well, poor Argenter wasn't a sinner above all that dwelt in
Jerusalem. And now, there are his wife and daughter. I'm sorry for
them. They'll find it a hard time."

"I'm sorry, too," said Aunt Euphrasia, with heart-gentleness. She
could not help seeing the eternal laws; she read the world and the
Word with the inner illumining; but she was tender over all the poor
souls who were not to blame for the whirl of fever and falseness
they were born into; who could not or dared not fling themselves out
of it upon the simple, steadfast, everlasting verities, and--be
broken; upon whom, therefore, these must fall, and grind them to
powder.

"How will it be with them?" she asked.

"Do you mean there isn't anything left, sir? Nothing to carry out
the will?"

Rodney had dropped his spoon and left his soup untasted, since his
father first spoke: he had lifted up his eyes quickly, and listened
w