After waiting several days, father wrote to the secretary.

Promptly came the reply that there was no record on the books of father's owning any stock, and a polite request for more explicit information.
"I'll make it explicit enough, confound him," father declared, and departed for the bank to get the stock in question from his safe-deposit box.
"Ernest is a very remarkable man," he said when he got back and while I was helping him off with his overcoat.

"I repeat, my daughter, that young man of yours is a very remarkable young man." I had learned, whenever he praised Ernest in such fashion, to expect disaster.
"They have already walked upon my face," father explained.

"There was no stock.

The box was empty.