We have very little. In fact, Ezra, we have next to
nothing in the bank. It is all gone."

For a moment the young man stood motionless, glaring at his father.
The expression of incredulity which had appeared on his features faded
away before the earnestness of the other, and was replaced by a look of
such malignant passion that it contorted his whole face.

"You fool!" he shrieked, springing forward with the book upraised as
though he would have struck the old merchant. "I see it now. You have
been speculating on your own hook, you cursed ass! What have you done
with it?" He seized his father by the collar and shook him furiously in
his wrath.

"Keep your hands off me!" the senior partner cried, wrenching himself
free from his son's grasp. "I did my best with the money. How dare you
address me so?"

"Did your best!" hissed Ezra, hurling the ledger down on the table with
a crash. "What did you mean by speculating without my knowledge, and
telling me at the same time that I knew all that was done? Hadn't I
warned you a thousand times of the danger of it? You are not to be
trusted with money."

"Remember, Ezra," his father said with dignity, re-seating himself in
the chair from which he had risen, in order to free himself from his
son's clutches, "if I lost the money, I also made it. This was a
flourishing concern before you were born. If the worst comes to the
worst you are only where I started. But we are far from being
absolutely ruined as yet."

"To think of it!" Ezra cried, flinging himself upon the office sofa, and
burying his face in his hands. "To think of all I have said of our
money and our resources! What will Clutterbuck and the fellows at the
club say? How can I alter the ways of life that I have learned?"
Then, suddenly clenching his hands, and turning upon his father he broke
out, "We must have it back, father; we _must_, by fair means or foul.
You must do it, for it was you who lost it. What can we do? How long
have we to do it in? Is this known in the City? Oh, I shall be ashamed
to show my face on 'Change." So he rambled on, half-maddened by the
pictures of the future which rose up in his mind.

"Be calm, Ezra, be calm!" his father said imploringly. "We have many
chances yet if we only make the best of them. There is no use lamenting
the past. I freely confess that I was wrong in using this money without
your knowledge, but I did it from the best of motives. We must put o