and death.

He opened the poetry volume at a point where a page was turned down,
then, standing by the electric light, boldly straight and without the
air of a man who entertains fear of life or death, he read aloud and
with excellent elocutionary effect ...

"I only loved one country in my life
And that was France: I saw her break her heart
Against the cruel squares: then the last order
Broke from my lips as coolly as a smile.
God! How they rode! All France was in that last
Charge; and France broke her heart for me...."

He paused and a deep melancholy spread over the features until the eyes
might truly have been those of broken dreams gazing seaward from the
rocks of St. Helena. He glanced again at the pages and quoted softly.

"Ninette, Ninette, remember the Old Guard!"

After that he laid the book aside and turned the thumbed pages of the
blank book. These were pages scrawled across in a boy's round hand. The
man who had once been that boy stopped when he came to an entry written
long ago by lamplight in an unheated attic, with frozen branches
scraping the roof and the eaves.

"There is something in me," he read, "that tells me no man was ever
greater than I've got it in me to be. John Hayes Hammond, Carnegie,
Rockefeller, Frick were all poor boys...." He paused once more and let
his eyes wander to the bottom of the page and dwell upon this addendum.
"P.S. I sold them to Slivers Martin for ten dollars ($10.00) and they
only cost me seven--and he had to go after them."

As he held the book in his hand he was interrupted by a low knock on the
door. Perhaps the night watch-man had come up with a question. Hastily
laying the diary of his boyhood over the pistol so as to conceal it he
opened the door--and Len Haswell entered.

The broker's ruin had been complete, and his dual troubles had evidently
driven him to demoralization of another sort. His face wore a set such
as artists give the features of Death--the pale implacability of doom.
He loomed there gigantic and silent; strangely altered by his chalky
pallor and the dark rings out of which his eyes burned. After a moment
Hamilton Burton inquired coolly, "Well, Haswell?"

"You may recall," said the deep voice in a tone of menacing quiet, "that
during the two days when you scattered ruin broadcast--and ruined
yourself into the bargain--I led your forces on the floor of the
Exchange."

"Perfectly," was the calm response. "I recall t