ten o'clock train."

"Yes, I'll take the boy," said the other; "but you'll have to look sharp
and lose no time. They will be sequestering the moment they hear of it,
and I half suspect old Engler will be before you."

"But my personal effects? I have things of value."

"Hush, hush! he 'll overhear you. Come, young gentleman," said he to
me,--"come home and sup with me. The hotel is so full, they 've no
quarters for you. I 'll try if I can't put you up."

Eccles stood with his head bent down as we moved away, then lifted his
eyes, waved his hand a couple of times, and said, "By-bye."

"Isn't he coming with us?" asked I.

"Not just yet: he has some business to detain him," said the banker; and
we moved on.

CHAPTER XV. A TERRIBLE SHOCK

Herb Heinfetter was a bachelor, and lived in a very modest fashion over
his banking-house; and as he was employed from morning to night, I
saw next to nothing of him. Eccles, he said, had been called away, and
though I eagerly asked where, by whom, and for how long, I got no other
answer than "He is called away," in very German English, and with a
stolidity of look fully as Teutonic.

The banker was not talkative: he smoked all the evening, and drank beer,
and except an occasional monosyllabic comment on its excellence, said
little.

"Ach, ja!" he would say, looking at me fixedly, as though assenting
to some not exactly satisfactory conclusion his mind had come to about
me,--"ach, ja!" And I would have given a good deal at the time to
know to what peculiar feature of my fortune or my fate this
half-compassionate exclamation extended.

"Is Eccles never coming back?" cried I, one day, as the post came in,
and no tidings of him appeared; "is he never coming at all?"

"Never, no more."

"Not coming back?" cried I.

"No; not come back no more."

"Then what am I staying here for? Why do I wait for him?"

"Because you have no money to go elsewhere," said he; and for once he
gave way to something he thought was a laugh.

"I don't understand you, Herr Heinfetter," said I; "our letter of
credit, Mr. Eccles told me, was on your house here. Is it exhausted, and
must I wait for a remittance?"

"It is exhaust; Mr. Eccles exhaust it."

"So that I must write for money; is that so?"

"You may write and write, mien lieber, but it won't come."

Herr Heinfetter drained his tall glass, and, leaning his arms on the
table, said: "I will tell you in German, you know it well enough