drive to
Carleton Street."

He stepped into the carriage, and away it rolled with its load of
sorrow.

Mr. Sandford found the glances of his companion and the bystanders quite
uncomfortable, and he slunk silently away. Failure and disgrace he
had met; but this was a position for which he had not the nerve.
The self-accusing Cain was not the only man who has exclaimed, "My
punishment is greater than I can bear." Flight was the only alternative
for Sandford. As long as he remained in Boston, every face seemed to
wear a look of condemnation. The mark was set upon him, and avenging
fiends pursued him. That very day he left the city in disguise. Through
what trials he passed will never be known. But destitute, friendless,
and broken-spirited, he wandered from city to city, a vagabond upon the
face of the earth. Nor did a sterner retribution long delay. In New
Orleans, he was so far reduced that he was obliged to earn a miserable
support in an oyster-saloon near the levee. One night, a fight began
between some drunken boatmen: and Sandford, though in no way concerned
in the affair, received a chance bullet in his forehead, and fell dead
without a word.

CHAPTER XXIX.

Bullion, at last, in spite of his armor of selfishness and stoicism, was
touched in a vital part. His dreams of wealth had vanished into air. The
confederate in New York in whom he had trusted had only made him a dupe.
Blindly following out his agreement, he found himself saddled with a
load of railroad-shares, useless for any present purpose, and all his
convertible property gone. The consciousness that he--the man of all
others who prided himself upon his sagacity--had been so easily
overreached was quite as humiliating as the idea of ruin itself. He
remembered Kerbstone's appeals, also, and now cursed his own stupidity
in refusing to aid him. There he had overreached himself; it was his own
stocks which he had thrown down to the "bears." And now, heaviest stroke
of all, Fletcher, his intrepid and chivalrous agent, who had stepped
into the breach for him, had paid for his indiscretion with his life.
The thought gave him a pang he had never felt, not even when he followed
his wife to the grave. Homeward he went, but slowly and almost without
volition. He recognized no acquaintances that he met, but walked on
abstractedly, fixing his eyes on vacancy with a look as mournful as his
iron features could wear. In his ears still rang those thrilling cries.
H