sation of
checking it out was much like parting with his heart's blood. Though it
was a relief to feel that his credit was still good and that he could
continue to shine in the community for another month as its one large,
luminous star, it also brought the cold perspiration out on him when he
woke up in the night and remembered where this noble act had placed him.
He was worse than penniless if Mudge could not raise more money, but
this he refused to believe a possibility.

In the days which followed, the circles deepened beneath his eyes, his
high color faded and Mudge's laconic messages "Nothing doing" were not
calculated to restore it. As the time shortened toward another payday
there were moments when Symes felt that his overtaxed nerves nearly had
reached their limit. There was no rest or solace for him in his home,
for when Augusta was not away with Dr. Harpe the latter was there to
remind him of the skeleton jangling in his closet. He came and went
beneath the cold eyes of the one and the half-contemptuous glances of
the other, like, as he told himself, a necessary but objectionable
boarder.

He no longer found diversion in his nightly game of "slough" in the card
room of the Terriberry House, for they became only occasions to remind
him that he owed his fellow-players more than he could ever hope to pay
if Mudge did not dispose of more bonds quickly or the stockholders did
not "come through," as he phrased it. He knew fairly well the financial
resources of those whom he had favored with his liberal patronage and
realized that they were doomed to go down with him to that limbo
provided for the over-sanguine and the over-trusting.

At last the black day came when the treasury could not meet the smallest
bills. Delay was no longer possible. He must play his last card. An
imperative call must be made upon the stockholders and Symes telegraphed
Mudge to this effect.

Symes dreaded the reply, yet he tried to bolster his courage with the
argument which had seemed so potent at the time he used it, namely, that
they were all in too deep to refuse aid at this crisis. Symes imagined
that he could almost see himself growing old in the hours of suspense
which followed the sending of the telegram.

Symes's hand shook noticeably when he took the yellow sheet from the
operator who delivered it in person. The message read:

Turned down cold. Something wrong. Letter follows.

MUDGE

Symes's towering figure seem