are breaking my heart," was the first and only appeal Mrs.
Gray ever made to him. It was two days before the twenty-third and it
did not come until after the "second-hand store" men had driven away
from her door with the bulk of his clothing in their wagon. She and
Peggy had seen little of Brewster, and his nervous restlessness alarmed
them. His return was the talk of the town. Men tried to shun him, but
he persistently wasted some portion of his fortune on his unwilling
subjects. When he gave $5,000 in cash to a Home for Newsboys, even his
friends jumped to the conclusion that he was mad. It was his only gift
to charity and he excused his motive in giving at this time by
recalling Sedgwick's injunction to "give sparingly to charity."
Everything was gone from his thoughts but the overpowering eagerness to
get rid of a few troublesome thousands. He felt like an outcast, a
pariah, a hated object that infected every one with whom he came in
contact. Sleep was almost impossible, eating was a farce; he gave
elaborate suppers which he did not touch. Already his best friends were
discussing the advisability of putting him in a sanitarium where his
mind might be preserved. His case was looked upon as peculiar in the
history of mankind; no writer could find a parallel, no one imagine a
comparison.

Mrs. Gray met him in the hallway of her home as he was nervously
pocketing the $60 he had received in payment for his clothes. Her face
was like that of a ghost. He tried to answer her reproof, but the words
would not come, and he fled to his room, locking the door after him. He
was at work there on the transaction that was to record the total
disappearance of Edwin Brewster's million--his final report to
Swearengen Jones, executor of James Sedgwick's will. On the floor were
bundles of packages, carefully wrapped and tied, and on the table was
the long sheet of white paper on which the report was being drawn. The
package contained receipts--thousands upon thousands of them--for the
dollars he had spent in less than a year. They were there for the
inspection of Swearengen Jones, faithfully and honorably kept--as if
the old westerner would go over in detail the countless documents.

He had the accounts balanced up to the hour. On the long sheet lay the
record of his ruthlessness, the epitaph of a million. In his pocket was
exactly $79.08. This was to last him for less than forty-eight hours
and--then it would go to join the rest. It w