nce. In vain he tried to shake himself free of the
successive obsessions which stormed down the path of the night, dragging
him after them, a slave lashed to the wheels of a chariot of flame.

At last it was the land deal and syndicate on which his future depended,
and the savage fate which seemed about to snatch his fortune away as it
had done so often before; as it had done on the day when Flamingo went
down near the post at the Derby with a madwoman dragging at the bridle.
He had had a sure thing then, and it was whisked away just when it would
have enabled him to pass the crisis of his life. Wife, home, the old
fascinating, crowded life--they had all vanished because of that vile
trick of destiny; and ever since then he had been wandering in the
wilderness through years that brought no fruit of his labours. Yet here
was his chance, his great chance, to get back what he had and was in the
old misspent days, with new purposes in life to follow and serve; and
it was all in cruel danger of being swept away when almost within his
grasp.

If he could but achieve the big deal, he could return to wife and home,
he could be master in his own house, not a dependent on his wife's
bounty. That very evening Jesse Bulrush, elated by his own good fortune
in capturing Cupid, had told him as sadly as was possible, while his
own fortunes were, as he thought, soaring, that every avenue of credit
seemed closed; that neither bank nor money-lender, trust nor loan
company, would let him have the ten thousand dollars necessary for him
to hold his place in the syndicate; while each of the other members
of the clique had flatly and cheerfully refused, saying they were busy
carrying their own loads. Crozier had commanded Jesse not to approach
them, but the fat idealist had an idea that his tongue had a gift of
wheedling, and he believed that he could make them "shell out," as
he put it. He had failed, and he was obliged to say so, when Crozier,
suspecting, brought him to book.

"They mean to crowd you out--that's their game," Bulrush had said.
"They've closed up all the ways to cash or credit. They're laying to do
you out of your share. Unless you put up the cash within the four days
left, they'll put it through without you. They told me to tell you
that."

And Crozier had not even cursed them. He said to Jesse Bulrush that it
was an old game to get hold of a patent that made a fortune for a song
while the patentee died in the poor-house.