Such a friend he did not find it very hard to obtain; and as nearly the whole burden of the business fell upon his shoulders, it was not at all difficult to hide every thing from Jasper.
Confident as Parker was in his great shrewdness, his speculations outside of the business did not turn out very favourably.

His first essay was in the purchase of stocks, on which he lost, in a week, two thousand dollars.
Like the gamester who loses, he only played deeper, in the hope of recovering his losses; and as it often happens with the gamester, in similar circumstances, the deeper he played, the more he lost.
And so it went on.

Sometimes the young man had a turn of good fortune, and sometimes all the chances went against him.

But he was too far committed to recede without a discovery.

There was no standing still; and so newer and bolder operations were tried, involving larger and larger sums of money, until the responsibilities of the firm, added to the large cash drafts made without the cognizance of Jasper, were enormous.
To all such mad schemes the end must come; and the end came in this instance.