DOWS 286

XXVIII. BROKEN LINKS 295

XXIX. ALL THAT A MAN HATH 312

XXX. THE VALLEY OF DRY BONES 332

XXXI. NARROWING WALLS 347

XXXII. THE LION'S SHARE 354

XXXIII. GATES OF BRASS 368

XXXIV. THE ABYSS 375

XXXV. MARGERY'S ANSWER 384

XXXVI. THE GRAY WOLF 396

XXXVII. THE QUALITY OF MERCY 408

XXXVIII. THE PENDULUM-SWING 416

XXXIX. DUST AND ASHES 428

XL. APPLES OF ISTAKHAR 438

XLI. THE DESERT AND THE SOWN 448

THE PRICE

I

AT CHAUDIERE'S

In the days when New Orleans still claimed distinction as the only
American city without trolleys, sky-scrapers, or fast trains--was it
yesterday? or the day before?--there was a dingy, cobwebbed cafe in an
arcade off Camp Street which was well-beloved of newspaperdom;
particularly of that wing of the force whose activities begin late and
end in the small hours.

"Chaudiere's," it was called, though I know not if that were the name of
the round-faced, round-bodied little Marseillais who took toll at the
desk. But all men knew the fame of its gumbo and its stuffed crabs, and
that its claret was neither very bad nor very dear. And if the walls
were dingy and the odors from the grille pungent and penetrating at
times, there went with the white-sanded floor, and the marble-topped
tables for two, an Old-World air of recreative comfort which is rarer
now, even in New Orleans, than it was yesterday or the day before.

It was at Chaudiere's that Griswold had eaten his first breakfast in the
Crescent City; and it was at Chaudiere's again that he was sharing a
farewell supper with Bainbridge, of the _Louisianian_. Six weeks lay
between that and this; forty-odd days of discouragement and failure
superadded upon other similar days and weeks and months. The breakfast,
he remembered, had been garnished with certain green sprigs of hope; but
at the supper-table he ate like a barbarian in arrears to his appetite
and the garnishings were the bitter herbs of humiliation and defeat.

Without meaning to, Bainbridge had been strewing the path with fresh
thorns for the defeated one. He had just been billeted for a run down
the Central American coast to write up the banana trade for his paper,
and he was boyishly jubilant over the assi