“Carroll’s sick,” said Lee, with a curious effect of partisanship towards himself, as well as Carroll.  “He’s sick, and it is too bad.  His nerves are a wreck.”

“Well, our nerves are becoming wrecks,” the postmaster rejoined, dryly.

“That’s so,” said the druggist, with a worried look.  “I don’t know but I’ll have to mortgage my stock.  I’ve lost more than I can afford in that United Fuel.”

“I don’t like to own up I’ve been bit,” said the postmaster, “but when it comes to being sick, and nerves being wrecks, there are others with full as much reason as Carroll.”

“He’ll pay up every cent,” said Lee, eagerly.

“Maybe he will pay his debts,” said the postmaster.  “I am not going to say he won’t.  I suppose he means to.  But when it comes to making things good, when he has simply led you by the nose into disastrous speculations, I don’t know.  Bigger men than Arthur Carroll don’t do it.”

“That’s so,” said Drew.  “It’s one thing to pay your butcher’s bill in the long run, and be above stealing goods off the counter, but a man can cheat his fellow-men in a stock trade and think pretty well of himself, and other folks think well of him.”

“That’s so,” said Sigsbee Ray.

“I haven’t any doubt that he will arrange that,” said Lee.  “And, for that matter, the United Fuel may look up yet.  I had a prospectus—­”

“Prospectus be damned!” said the postmaster.  He seldom used an oath, and his tongue made a vicious lurch over it.

The druggist gave an enormous sigh.  “Well, it won’t come up to-night, and I’ve left my little boy alone in the store,” said he.  “I’ve got to be going.”

“So have I,” said the postmaster.  “My wife is alone.”

“My wife always stands up for Carroll,” said Lee, trotting nervously after the other men as they left the room.  “Says she guesses he will end up by paying his bills as well as other men that are blaming him.”

“Hope to God he will,” said the postmaster.

The clerk and the two stenographers from Carroll’s office had been having their heads together over a time-table.  They also slipped out after the three men.  The elder one still sniffed softly in her handkerchief.

The young man looked around at the stair up which Carroll had disappeared, and winked as he went out.  There were left Carroll’s coachman, the Hungarian girl, Madame Estella Griggs, Willy Eddy, and his wife.  The coachman heard a noise of pounding in the stable and ran out.  Marie remained in the doorway looking at the others with her piteous red eyes; Minna Eddy advanced towards her.

“They owe you your wages, don’t they?” said she, with no sympathy, but rather a menace.

Little Marie shrank back.  “Yis,” said she, pursing her lips.

“You’re a fool!” said Minna Eddy.

Marie smiled feebly at her.

Minna Eddy stood glaring around the room.  Her husband was at her elbow, watching her anxiously.