Walter had listened with languid attention; still, however, gathering the meaning of what was said until the mention of his father's name roused him, and then he listened eagerly, and with a sudden quickening of the pulse. He instantly connected the idea of what he had heard with his father's sudden illness, and naturally associated the two together.
"My father has heard of the failure of the company, and that has made him sick," he thought.
Though this implied a double misfortune, it relieved his anxiety a little. It supplied a cause for his father's illness. He had been afraid that his father had met with some accident, perhaps of a fatal nature. But if he had become ill in consequence of heavy losses, it was not likely that the illness was a very severe one.
He thought of speaking to the gentlemen, and making some further inquiries about the Mining Company and Mr. James Wall, but it occurred to him that his father might not like to have him pry into his affairs, and he therefore refrained.
When the gentlemen left the cars, he saw one of them had left a morning paper lying in the seat. He picked it up, and examined the columns until his eyes fell upon the following paragraph:—
"The failure of the Great Metropolitan Mining Company proves to be a disastrous one. The assets will not be sufficient to pay more than five per cent. of the amount of the sums invested by the stockholders, possibly not that. There must have been gross mismanagement somewhere, or such a result could hardly have been reached. We understand that the affairs of the company are in the hands of assignees who are empowered to wind them up. The stockholders in this vicinity will await the result with anxiety."
"That looks rather discouraging, to be sure," thought Walter. "I suppose father will lose a good deal. But I'll tell him he needn't worry about me. I shan't mind being poor, even if it comes to that. As long as he is left to me, I won't complain."
Walter became comparatively cheerful. He felt convinced that loss of property was all that was to be apprehended, and with the elastic spirits of youth he easily reconciled himself to that. He had never had occasion to think much about money. All his wants had been provided for with a lavish hand. He had, of course, seen poor people, but he did not realize what poverty meant. He had even thought at times that it must be rather a pleasant thing to earn one's own living. Still he did not apprehend that he would have to do this. His father might have lost heavily, but probably not to such an extent as to render this necessary.
So the time passed until, about half-past eleven o'clock, the cars stopped at Willoughby station.
The station was in rather a lonely spot,—that is, no houses were very near. Walter did not stop to speak to anybody, but, on leaving the cars, carpet-bag in hand, jumped over a fence, and took his way across the fields to his father's house. By the road it would have been a mile, but it was scarcely more than half a mile by the foot-path.