Compared with his former self, Monty was now almost a physical wreck, haggard, thin and defiant, a shadow of the once debonair young New Yorker, an object of pity and scorn.  Ashamed and despairing, he had almost lacked the courage to face Mrs. Gray.  The consolation he once gained through her he now denied himself and his suffering, peculiar as it was, was very real.  In absolute recklessness he gave dinner after dinner, party after party, all on a most lavish scale, many of his guests laughing at him openly while they enjoyed his hospitality.  The real friends remonstrated, pleaded, did everything within their power to check his awful rush to poverty, but without success; he was not to be stopped.

At last the furniture began to go, then the plate, then ail the priceless bric-a-brac.  Piece by piece it disappeared until the apartments were empty and he had squandered almost all of the $40,350 arising from the sales.  The servants were paid off, the apartments relinquished, and he was beginning to know what it meant to be “on his uppers.”  At the banks he ascertained that the interest on his moneys amounted to $19,140.86.  A week before the 23d of September, the whole million was gone, including the amounts won in Lumber and Fuel and other luckless enterprises.  He still had about $17,000 of his interest money in the banks, but he had a billion pangs in his heart—­the interest on his improvidence.

He found some delight in the discovery that the servants had robbed him of not less than $3,500 worth of his belongings, including the Christmas presents that he in honor could not have sold.  His only encouragement came from Grant & Ripley, the lawyers.  They inspired confidence in his lagging brain by urging him on to the end, promising brightness thereafter.  Swearengen Jones was as mute as the mountains in which he lived.  There was no word from him, there was no assurance that he would approve of what had been done to obliterate Edwin Peter Brewster’s legacy.

Dan DeMille and his wife implored Monty to come with them to the mountains before his substance was gone completely.  The former offered him money, employment, rest and security if he would abandon the course he was pursuing.  Up in Fortieth Street Peggy Gray was grieving her heart out and he knew it.  Two or three of those whom he had considered friends refused to recognize him in the street in this last trying week, and it did not even interest him to learn that Miss Barbara Drew was to become a duchess before the winter was gone.  Yet he found some satisfaction in the report that one Hampton of Chicago had long since been dropped out of the race.

One day he implored the faithful Bragdon to steal the Boston terriers.  He could not and would not sell them and he dared not give them away.  Bragdon dejectedly appropriated the dogs and Brewster announced that some day he would offer a reward for their return and “no questions asked.”