st, which
attracted small savings from all around. There had been no whisper or
fear about it, so solid was its olden reputation. There were people who
would as soon have doubted the Bible.

Two days after this, George Eastman sailed for Europe, on a sudden
summons,--his wife's illness. There had been a meeting called, and a
short statement made. Owing to sudden and unexpected depreciation in
railway-bonds and improvement-bonds, and what not, it was deemed best to
suspend payment for the present. In a few weeks all would be straight
again, with perhaps a trifling loss to depositors. Already the directors
had been very magnanimous. Mr. Eastman and several others had turned
over to the bank a large stock of mortgages: in fact, the virtue of
these men was so lauded that the losses seemed to be quite thrown into
the background.

But the examination revealed a sickening mass of selfishness and
cupidity; transactions that were culpably careless, others dishonorable
to the last degree. If the larger depositors had not been warned, there
was certainly a remarkable unanimity of thought, as, for the past
fortnight, they had been steadily drawing out their thousands. Wild
railroad-speculations, immense mortgages on real estate that now lay
flat and dead: scanty available assets that would hardly pay twenty
cents on a dollar.

This was what David Lawrence heard when he returned from St. Louis, a
heavy-hearted, dispirited man. Two recent failures had borne heavily
upon him. If last winter had been dull, there was no adjective to apply
to this. His first step was to mortgage Hope Terrace. He had deeded it
to his wife, unincumbered; but now it appeared his only chance of
salvation. Mrs. Lawrence made a feeble protest at first, and demanded
that Fred should be sent for, but there was no time. He met his pressing
notes, and was tided over; but, oh! what was to be the end of it all?

An indignation-meeting was called; and so high ran popular feeling, that
new directors were appointed for the bank. Mr. Lawrence would have fain
declined, but the community insisted. In this time of general distrust,
they came back to the loyal gentleman, who, whatever his pride might be,
had never deceived one of them.

Alas! had he not enough perplexity of his own, that this new sorrow and
shame should stare him in the face, bow him to the earth?

Not his own son, thank God! not any blood kin; and yet his daughter's
husband, his fair Gertrude, of wh