For a week all was well with me. Ballyhacks went up to seventy-five; but Bustumups were slower, and had only touched forty in the same time. This figure satisfied me, inasmuch as it enabled me to pay my debt at the bank. Yet I believed, with the utmost confidence, that there was five or ten thousand more in the stock for me, and as long as things were easy at the bank, I did not think of realizing.
Then I was sick for ten days, and was obliged to stay in the house, but even while my brain was on fire with fever I went down town one day. I dared not leave my deficit to be discovered by my substitute. I compelled poor Cormorin to lend me the eight thousand again, on the security of my Bustumups. They were worth nearly this sum in the market by this time, and he did not object very strenuously.
As soon as I was able to get out, I hastened back to the bank, and took my place at the counter. Cormorin had sold his stock at eighty. Bustumups were quoted at fifty, with a prospect of a further advance. My friend had made thirteen thousand dollars. When I had made him whole, he instantly resigned his place, fearful, I think, of getting into trouble through my agency. He went to New York, to go into business there. I did not care. My stocks at fifty paid my debt, and left me forty-five hundred surplus. I was excited over the prospect. I should be a rich man in a few weeks.
But everything did not turn out just as I anticipated.
CHAPTER XIX.
A CRASH IN COPPERS.
I WAS worth forty-five hundred dollars while Bustumups were quoted at fifty. Every day, while they hung at about this figure, I debated with myself the policy of selling, paying my debt, and investing my surplus in some other concern. Perhaps I should have done so, if I had known of a company in which I could place entire confidence. I missed Cormorin very much, for I needed his advice; and I had come to regard him as an oracle in the matter of coppers.
It looked like madness to sacrifice a stock which might go up to eighty or a hundred, as the Ballyhack had, and though my debt worried me, I could not make up my mind to let it go. If I could put ten thousand dollars in my pocket, my fortune would be made, for with this sum I could operate on a large scale. There was no danger of another examination of my cash at present, and I was secure. But Bustumups did not advance as rapidly as I wished. They hung at about fifty. I was told that parties were investigating the condition of the mine, and that as soon as they reported, the stock would go up as rapidly as Ballyhack had done. I was willing to wait patiently for a week or two, while the stock about held its own. Its trifling fluctuations up and down troubled me, but the parties who worked it convinced me that these were only accidental changes.