“As I dipped my pen,” continued the Sahib, “to write to my friend the judge to ask for a loan of three hundred rupees, the very smallest sum that would suffice to cover needful expenses, a servant brought in letters from England. I laid down my pen and opened the first one, little guessing the heavy news which it would contain. The letter informed me that, by the failure of a bank, all my father’s property, the savings of many years, had been swept away; and that he who had risen in the morning believing himself to be in affluence, had lain down at night in a state of poverty, which illness made more distressing.”