It is this latter fate that came to a man who would have no place in this record save for the fact that his last querulous and still-questioning days were lived side by side with a man who had also sought money, and having found it had chosen for it certain experimental uses by means of which siphon he was presently drained dry. For him also had been many defeats. A hospital ward held them both, and the two beds were side by side, the one representing a patience that never failed, yet something more than patience. For the face of this man bore no token of defeat. It was rather triumph that looked at moments from the clear eyes that had also an almost divine pity as they turned toward the neighbor who poured out his story between paroxysms of coughing, and having told it once, proceeded to tell it again, his sole and final satisfaction in life being the arraignment of all living. The visitor who came into the ward was pinned on the instant, the fiery eyes demanding the hearing which was the last gift time held for him. It was a common story often told, this slow, inevitable descent into poverty. Its force lay in the condensed fury of the speaker, who looked on the men he had known as sworn conspirators against him, and cursed them in their going out and coming in with a relish that no argument could affect. What his neighbor might have to tell was a matter of the purest indifference. It was impossible even to ask his story; and it remained impossible until a day when arraignment was cut short and the disappointed, bitter soul passed on to such conditions as it had made for itself. "You've got the best of me. They all do," he said in dying, with a last turn of the sombre eyes toward his neighbor. "You ought to have gone first by a week, and there you are. But this time I guess it's just as well. I don't seem to want to fight any longer, and I'm glad I'm done. It's your turn next. Good--" The words had come with gasps between and long pauses. Here they stopped once for all. Good had found him; the only good for the child of earth, who, having failed to learn his lesson here, must try a larger school with a different system of training. The empty bed was not filled at once. A screen shut it off. There was time now to hear other words than the passionate railings that had monopolized all time. The sick man mended a little, and in one of the days in which speech was easier gave this record of his forty years:--