Bojo reached the court still in a daze, unable to comprehend where it had all gone--this fortune that was on his fingers yesterday. Yesterday! If he had only closed up yesterday! Then through the haze of his numbed sense of loss came a poignant, terrifying recall to actuality. He stood pledged to Drake for the amount of $50,000, and he could not make good even a third! If the pool had been wiped out--and he had slight hopes of saving anything there--he would have to procure $35,000 somewhere, somehow, or face to Drake and his own self-respect that he could not redeem his own word. What could he say, what excuse offer! If the pool had collapsed--he was dishonored. The realization came slowly. For a long while, sitting in the embrasure of the bay window--his forehead against the cold panes, it seemed to him incredible the way he had gone these last six months; as though it had all been a fever that had peopled his horizon with unreal figures, phantasies of hot dreams. But the unblinkable, waking fact was there. His word had been pledged for $50,000 to Drake, to the father of the girl he was to marry. Marry! At the thought he laughed aloud bitterly. That, too, was a thing that had vanished in the bubble of dreams. He thought of his father, to whom he would have to go; but his pride recoiled. He would never go to him for aid--a failure and a bankrupt. Rather beg Drake on his knees for time to work out the debt than that! "How did I do it? What possessed me! What madness possessed me!" he said wearily again and again. At eight o clock, when all the high electric lights had come out about the blazing window of the court, recalled by the sounds of music from the glass-paneled restaurant he went out for dinner, wondering why his friends had not returned. At ten when he came back after long tramping of the streets, a note was on the table, in Granning's broad handwriting. Hoped to catch you. Fred's gone off on a tear; God knows where he is. Roscy and I have been trying to locate him all day. Hope you pulled through, old boy. GRANNING. At twelve o clock, still miserably alone, tortured by remorse and the thought of the wreck he had unwittingly brought his chums, he could bear the suspense of evasion no longer. He went up to Drake's to learn the worst, steeled to a full confession. In the hall, as he waited chafing and miserable, Fontaine, Gunther's right-hand partner, passed out hurriedly, jaws set, oblivious. Drake was in the library in loose dressing-gown and slippers, a cigar in his mouth, immersed in the usual contemplation of the picture puzzle. "By George, he bears it well," Bojo thought to himself, moved to admiration by the calm of that impassive figure. "Hello, Tom," he said, looking up, "what's brought you here at this time of night? Anything wrong?" "Wrong?" said Bojo faintly. "Haven't you heard about Pittsburgh & New Orleans?" "Well, what about it?"