or where he should go, Griswold pushed through the
strikers' picket lines, and, avoiding the militant suburb, drifted by
way of sundry outlying residence streets and a country road to the high
ground back of the city.

In deserting Raymer he was actuated by no motive of disloyalty. On the
contrary, so much of the motive as had any bearing upon his relations
with the young iron-founder sprang from a generous impulse to free
Raymer from an incubus. If it were the curse of the Midas-touch to turn
all things to gold, it seemed to be his own peculiar curse to turn the
gold to dross; to leave behind him a train of disaster, defeat, and
tragic depravity. The plunge into the labor conflict had merely served
to afford another striking example of his inability to break the evil
spell, and Raymer could well spare him.

On the long tramp to the hills the events of the past few months
marshalled themselves in accusing review. No human being, save one, of
all those with whom he had come in contact since the day of
dragon-bearding in the New Orleans bank had escaped the contaminating
touch, and each in turn had suffered loss. The man Gavitt had given his
name and identity; the mate of the _Belle Julie_ had sacrificed what
little respect he may have had for law and order by becoming,
potentially, at least, a criminal accessory. The little Irish cab-driver
had sold himself for a price; and the negro deck-hand had earned his
mess of fried fish. The single exception was Charlotte Farnham, and he
told himself that she had escaped only because she had done her duty as
she saw it.

And as the bedeviling thing had begun, so it had continued, losing none
of its potency for evil. In the little world of Wahaska, which was to
have been the theatre of Utopian demonstration, the curse had persisted.
The money, used with the loftiest intentions, had served only as a means
to an end, and the end had proved to be the rearing of an apparently
impassable wall of bitter antagonism between master and men. And the
secret of the money's origin and acquisition, which was to have been so
easily cast aside and ignored, had become a soul-sickness incurable and
even contagious. Griswold was beginning to suspect that it had attacked
Margery Grierson; that it had subconsciously, if not otherwise, thrust
itself into Charlotte Farnham's life; and the night of horror so lately
past had shown him into what depths it could plunge its wretched
guardian and slave.