“Jim, it was tough to sit there and listen to the schemes to recoup that this old gentleman and this girl, for she is only twenty-one, have tried to hatch up.  The tears actually rolled down my cheeks as I listened; I couldn’t help it; you couldn’t either, Jim.  But at last out of all the plans considered, they found only one that had a tint of hope in it, and the serious mention of even that one, Jim, in any but present circumstances, would make you think we were dealing with lunatics.  But the girl has succeeded in making me think it worth trying.  Yes, Jim, she has, and I have told her so, and I hope to God that that hard-headed horse-sense of yours will not make you sit down on it.”

Bob Brownley had got to his feet; he was slipping the shackles of that fiery, romantic, Southern passion that years in college and Wall Street had taught him to keep prisoner.  His eyes were flashing sparks.  His nostrils vibrated like a deer buck’s in the autumn woods.  He faced me with his hands clinched.

“Jim Randolph,” he went on, “as I listened to that girl’s story of the terrible cruelty and devilish treachery practised by the human hyenas you and I associate with, human hyenas who, when in search of dirty dollars—­the only thing they know anything about—­put to shame the real beasts of the wilds—­when I listened, I tell you that I felt it would not give me a twinge of conscience to put a ball through that slick scoundrel Reinhart.  Yes, and that hired cur of his, too, who prostitutes a good family name and position, and an inherited ability the Almighty intended for more honest uses than the trapping of victims on whose purses his gutter-born master has set lecherous eyes.  And, Jim, as I listened, a troop of old friends invaded my memory—­friends whom I have not seen since before I went to Harvard, friends with whom I spent many a happy hour in my old Virginia home, friends born of my imagination, stalwart, rugged crusaders, who carried the sword and the cross and the banner inscribed ‘For Honour and for God.’  Old friends who would troop into my boyhood and trumpet, ’Bob, don’t forget, when you’re a man, that the goal is honour, and the code:  Do unto your neighbour as you would have your neighbour do unto you.  Don’t forget that millions is the crest of the groundlings.’  And, Jim, I thought my friends looked at me with reproachful eyes, as they said, ’You are well on the road, Bob Brownley, and in time your heart and soul will bear the hall-mark of the snaky S on the two upright bars, and you will be but a frenzied fellow in the Dirty Dollar army.’  Jim, Jim Randolph, as I listened to that agonising tale of the changing of that girl’s heaven to hell, I did not see that halo you and I have thought surrounded the sign of Randolph & Randolph.  I did not see it, Jim, but I did see myself, and I didn’t feel proud of the picture.  My God, Jim, is it possible you and I have joined the nobility of Dirty Dollars?  Is it possible we are leaving trails along our life’s path like that Reinhart left through the home of these Virginians, such trails as this girl has shown me?”