ndulgence, harshness, and brutality.

Even his human affiliations were descending. Playing a lone hand,
contemptuous of most of the men with whom he played, lacking in
sympathy or understanding of them, and certainly independent of them,
he found little in common with those to be encountered, say at the
Alta-Pacific. In point of fact, when the battle with the steamship
companies was at its height and his raid was inflicting incalculable
damage on all business interests, he had been asked to resign from the
Alta-Pacific. The idea had been rather to his liking, and he had found
new quarters in clubs like the Riverside, organized and practically
maintained by the city bosses. He found that he really liked such men
better. They were more primitive and simple, and they did not put on
airs. They were honest buccaneers, frankly in the game for what they
could get out of it, on the surface more raw and savage, but at least
not glossed over with oily or graceful hypocrisy. The Alta-Pacific had
suggested that his resignation be kept a private matter, and then had
privily informed the newspapers. The latter had made great capital out
of the forced resignation, but Daylight had grinned and silently gone
his way, though registering a black mark against more than one club
member who was destined to feel, in the days to come, the crushing
weight of the Klondiker's financial paw.

The storm-centre of a combined newspaper attack lasting for months,
Daylight's character had been torn to shreds. There was no fact in his
history that had not been distorted into a criminality or a vice. This
public making of him over into an iniquitous monster had pretty well
crushed any lingering hope he had of getting acquainted with Dede
Mason. He felt that there was no chance for her ever to look kindly on
a man of his caliber, and, beyond increasing her salary to seventy-five
dollars a month, he proceeded gradually to forget about her. The
increase was made known to her through Morrison, and later she thanked
Daylight, and that was the end of it.

One week-end, feeling heavy and depressed and tired of the city and its
ways, he obeyed the impulse of a whim that was later to play an
important part in his life. The desire to get out of the city for a
whiff of country air and for a change of scene was the cause. Yet, to
himself, he made the excuse of going to Glen Ellen for the purpose of
inspecting the brickyard with which Holdsworthy had g