ly of large profits at some
future period--that was all. It happened that none of the shareholders
had invested any very large sums, and this was thought a fortunate
circumstance, as none of them felt very deeply involved. The rich had
speculated with their superfluity, and they could bear to joke on the
subject of the Romantic Valley, though they shook their heads when the
supposed value of the shares was hinted at. The poor felt it more, and
some of the neediest sold their single shares or half-shares at a
terrible discount, while they would yet realise something. As time
rolled on, several of the older proprietors died off, and willed away,
with the rest of their property, the Romantic Valley Brewery shares to
their friends and relatives. A considerable number of them thus passed
from the first holders to the hands of others, one and all of whom
naturally accepted the legacies devised to them, and gave the
necessary signatures to the documents which made the shares their own.

Meanwhile, the managers went on working an unprofitable business,
borrowing money on the credit of the joint proprietors; and in the
face of all the advantages upon which they plumed themselves, plunged
deeper and deeper into debt, until, being forced to borrow at a high
rate of interest to pay for the use of former loans, they found their
credit, in the thirteenth year of their existence, completely
exhausted; and then the bubble burst at once in ruin, utter and
complete, overwhelming all who were legally connected with it, either
by original purchase, by transfer, or by inheritance. Independent
country gentlemen, west-country manufacturers, and merchants of
substantial capital, were summarily pounced upon by the fangs of the
law, and all simultaneously stripped of everything they possessed in
the world. Professional men, the fathers of families genteelly bred
and educated, were summarily bereft of every farthing, and condemned
in the decline of life to begin the world afresh. Not a few, seized
with mortal chagrin at the horrible consummation of an affair which
had never been anything but a source of loss and annoyance, sunk at
once into the grave. Others--accustomed perhaps for half a century to
the appliances of ease and luxury, and who were the owners of
hospitable mansions, the centres of genteel resort--at the present
moment hide their heads in cottages, and huts, and eleemosynary
chambers, where they wither in silence and neglect under t