ugly to
look upon. A few figures stood out grim, game and defiant to the last,
meeting the crisis as sportsmen facing the last chance. But for the
rest, the element of the human seemed to have disappeared in the animal
madness of beasts trapped awaiting destruction. These shifting,
struggling, contending clumps of men, shrieking and hoarse, all strength
cast to the winds, fighting for the last disappearing rung of financial
security, gave him a last final distaste of the life he had renounced.
He went out and passed another howling group of savages on the curb,
feeling all at once the high note of tragedy that lies in the
manifestation of obliterating rage of a great people disposing finally
of all the shallow horde of petty parasites that are eliminated by the
cleansing force of a great panic.

Doris arrived in the late afternoon and there was a family consultation,
at which he was not present. Whatever might have been done the week
before the issue had been decided. Drake's fate was in the hands of
Gunther, to whose house he had been summoned that night to learn the
terms which would be accorded him by the group of financial leaders who
had been hastily organized to save the country from the convulsion which
now threatened to overwhelm every industry and every institution.

At midnight Drake returned a ruined man, stripped of every possession, a
bankrupt. Only Patsie and Bojo were there when he came in. A certain
calm seemed to have replaced the unnatural febrile activity of the last
forty-eight hours, the calm of accepted defeat, the end of hopes, the
certainty of failure.

"It's over," he said with a nod of recognition. "They got me. I'm rather
hungry; let's have something to eat."

"What do you mean by it's over?" said Patsie, coming towards him. "You
lost?" He nodded. "How much?"

"Stripped clean."

"You mean that there's nothing left, not a cent?"

For the first time the old hunted look came back to his eyes. "It's
worse than that," he said. "It's what's got to be made good. Your Daddy
is a bankrupt, Patsie, one million and a half to the bad."

"You owe that?"

"Pretty close to it."

"But what will you do? They can't put you to prison."

"Oh, no," he said grimly, "there's nothing to be ashamed of in it; that
is, so far." He stopped a moment and watching him closely they both
divined that he was thinking of his wife. "If worse comes to worse," he
added moodily, "I've got to find some way of paying t