from now on keep right after the Burton
story."

Smitherton rolled a cigarette. "The follow-up tomorrow will be a big
one, too," he prophesied.

"Sure, but I'm not only talking about the follow-up. As to that you
handle the introduction and general. I'll have the various other ends
covered. I refer to next week and next month and next year--"

The staff man raised his brows, and, with an impatient and wearied
growl, his chief commented curtly: "Go, look up the word 'parasite' in
the dictionary. Maybe after that research you'll understand better what
I mean. There's copy in this for a long while. The branch is dead and
the leaves will be dropping."

The stunned parents, the ashen-lipped brother and the sister, not yet
recovered from her collapse, had months for realization; nightmare
months during which hordes of creditors arose with legitimate, but
wolf-like, hunger from everywhere, and courts adjudicated and the world
learned that not a remnant of shredded fortune nor a ragged banknote
would remain to the family which had dazzled New York since its Monte
Cristo star rose on the horizon.

While the wolves were picking the remains of the estate to its naked
bones, old Thomas Burton still went occasionally to his place in the
club and gazed out of the Fifth-avenue window. He wore a band of crepe
around his sleeve, and a defiant glint in his eyes, and since he was
left much to himself, he drank alone. He was no longer the same portly
and immaculately fashionable man. His flesh had shrunk until his clothes
hung upon him in misfit. His face was seamed and his hair instead of
being gray and smooth was white and stringy. But no pride is so
inflexible as acquired pride, so he came to the club where he was
snubbed, because, "By Gad, sir, I have the right to come here. I am
Thomas Standish Burton, and I will not permit myself to be driven
away--even though adversities have befallen me!"

He reflected upon "pursuits to which a gentleman of my age may, with
fitting dignity, apply himself," and his ideas were random and
impractical, but after a sufficient number of toddies they appeared to
himself feasible and meritorious. One day when he called for his first
afternoon drink the negro waiter shuffled uncomfortably, and said, "I'm
sorry, sir, but I was told I couldn't serve you."

"Why?" demanded the member, stiffening with indignation.

"Your name, sir, is posted on the suspended-credit list. That's my
orders, sir."

Tom