ng to do with the strange and blamable conduct of the wires.
As he made no proclamation of his loss, and no other case of sale
during the abeyance of the news came to the knowledge of the parties
interested, the matter, greatly to Chip's comfort, fell into entire
oblivion before a fortnight had passed. The understanding was, that,
though great mischief might have been done, none had been,--and
that somebody had simply made waste-paper of the little yellow
thunderbolt-scrawls.

For the first fortnight, Chip's nervousness, not to say conscience, very
much abated the pleasure of the many congratulations he received from
his friends, and from hundreds of people whom he had never before known
as his friends. He couldn't get through the streets any day without
meeting the solidest sort of men, with whom he had never exchanged
a word in his life, but whose faces were as familiar as that of the
Old-South clock, who took him by the hand quite warmly, and said,--

"Ah, Mr. Dartmouth, permit me to congratulate you on your good-fortune.
You have well deserved it. I like to see a young man like you make such
a ten-strike, especially when it comes in consequence of careful study
of the market."

The truth was, Chip had been playing a pretty hazardous game in the
cotton-market, chiefly at the risk of other parties; and the slice he
had so feloniously carved out of poor Captain Grant was quite small
compared with the gains he had managed to secure by thus venturing a
little of his own and a great deal of other people's money. The shrewd
minds in the secrets of the business world were not slow to see that
he must have realized at least a hundred thousand units of commercial
omnipotence by the operations of the first week after the rise.
Everybody was glad of an opportunity to speak to such a man. Even Mr.
Hopkins, immensely retired as he was, driving into State Street
about noon one genial day to receive a bank dividend or two, stepped
considerably out of his way, in walking from his low-hung turnout to the
door of one of the banks, in order to catch Mr. Dartmouth's notice, and
say to him, "Good-morning, Mr. Dartmouth! I hope you are very well,
Sir!" Chip recognized the salutation with a superb nod, but without the
accompaniment of any verbal rhetoric which was audible above the buzz of
the pavement; and the retired millionnaire passed on about his business.

"Ah!" thought Chip, "I am getting to be a merchant of the right sort, I
se