e so many phases of its dreary subtleties. It is
only when the soul of man has been built up into some strange
self-confidence, some curious faith in its own powers, based, no doubt,
on the actual presence of these same powers subtly involved in the body,
that it fronts life unflinchingly. It would be too much to say that
Cowperwood's mind was of the first order. It was subtle enough in all
conscience--and involved, as is common with the executively great, with
a strong sense of personal advancement. It was a powerful mind, turning,
like a vast searchlight, a glittering ray into many a dark corner; but
it was not sufficiently disinterested to search the ultimate dark.
He realized, in a way, what the great astronomers, sociologists,
philosophers, chemists, physicists, and physiologists were meditating;
but he could not be sure in his own mind that, whatever it was, it was
important for him. No doubt life held many strange secrets. Perhaps it
was essential that somebody should investigate them. However that might
be, the call of his own soul was in another direction. His business was
to make money--to organize something which would make him much money,
or, better yet, save the organization he had begun.

But this, as he now looked upon it, was almost impossible. It had been
too disarranged and complicated by unfortunate circumstances. He might,
as Steger pointed out to him, string out these bankruptcy proceedings
for years, tiring out one creditor and another, but in the meantime the
properties involved were being seriously damaged. Interest charges
on his unsatisfied loans were making heavy inroads; court costs were
mounting up; and, to cap it all, he had discovered with Steger that
there were a number of creditors--those who had sold out to Butler, and
incidentally to Mollenhauer--who would never accept anything except the
full value of their claims. His one hope now was to save what he could
by compromise a little later, and to build up some sort of profitable
business through Stephen Wingate. The latter was coming in a day or two,
as soon as Steger had made some working arrangement for him with
Warden Michael Desmas who came the second day to have a look at the new
prisoner.

Desmas was a large man physically--Irish by birth, a politician by
training--who had been one thing and another in Philadelphia from a
policeman in his early days and a corporal in the Civil War to a
ward captain under Mollenhauer. He was a cann