o
was adjusting his glasses and spreading the contents of a satchel on the
table before him.

"The human cash-register!" said DeLancy. "Born at the age of forty-two,
middle names Caution, Conservatism, and the Constitution. Favorite
romance--Statistics."

"Thank you!" said Bojo, somewhat mollified.

"There was a young man named Boskirk
Who never his duty would shirk,--"

began DeLancy--and forthwith retired into intellectual seclusion to
complete the limerick.

The spectacle of Boskirk immersed in business detail irritated Bojo
immeasurably. The feeling it aroused in him was not jealousy but rather
a sense that some one was threatening his right and his property.

A complete and insidious change had been worked in his moral fiber. The
hazardous speculation to which he was now committed, which was nothing
but the sheerest and most vicious form of gambling, the wrecking of
property, would have been impossible to him six months before. But he
had lived too long in the atmosphere of luxury, and too close to the
master adventurers of that speculative day. Luxury had become a second
nature to him; contact with men who could sell him out twenty times over
had brought him the parching hunger for money. All other ideals had
yielded before a new ideal--force. To impose one's self, making one's
own laws, brushing aside weak scruples, planning above ridiculously
simple and obvious schemes of legal conduct for the ordering of the
multitude, silencing criticism by the magnitude of the operation--a
master where a weak man ended a criminal:--this was the new scheme of
life which he was gradually absorbing.

He had become worldly with the confidence of succeeding. Whatever
compunctions he had formerly felt about a marriage with Doris he had
dismissed as pure sentimentality. There remained only a certain pride, a
desire to know his worth by some master stroke. In this fierce need, he
had lost moderation and caution. With the steady decline of Pittsburgh &
New Orleans, his appetite had increased. It was no longer a fair profit
he wanted, but something miraculous. He had sold hundreds of shares,
placing always a limit, vowing to be satisfied, and always going beyond
it. He had plunged first to the amount of thirty odd thousand, reserving
the fifty thousand which was pledged to the pool, but which he had not
been called on to deliver. But this fifty thousand remained a horrible
ever-present temptation. He resisted at first, bor