For with Tomlinson's first descent to the rotunda it broke.

The whole great space seemed filled with the bulletins and the broadside sheets of the morning papers, the crowd surging to and fro buying the papers, men reading them as they stood, and everywhere in great letters there met his eye: COLLAPSE OF THE ERIE AURIFEROUS THE GREAT GOLD SWINDLE ARREST OF THE MAN TOMLINSON EXPECTED THIS MORNING So stood the Wizard of Finance beside a pillar, the paper fluttering in his hand, his eyes fixed, while about him a thousand eager eyes and rushing tongues sent shame into his stricken heart.
And there his boy Fred, sent from upstairs, found him; and at the sight of the seething crowd and his father's stricken face, aged as it seemed all in a moment, the boy's soul woke within him.

What had happened he could not tell, only that his father stood there, dazed, beaten, and staring at him on every side in giant letters: ARREST OF THE MAN TOMLINSON "Come, father come upstairs," he said, and took him by the arm, dragging him through the crowd.
In the next half-hour as they sat and waited for the arrest in the false grandeur of the thousand-dollar suite-Tomlinson, his wife, and Fred-the boy learnt more than all the teaching of the industrial faculty of Plutoria University could have taught him in a decade.
Adversity laid its hand upon him, and at its touch his adolescent heart turned to finer stuff than the salted gold of the Erie Auriferous.

As he looked upon his father's broken figure waiting meekly for arrest, and his mother's blubbered face, a great wrath burned itself into his soul.
"When the sheriff comes--" said Tomlinson, and his lip trembled as he spoke.

He had no other picture of arrest than that.
"They can't arrest you, father," broke out the boy.