"I am Merwin. He has robbed me of my money for twenty years, and he said I should die a beggar. And I shot him!" On the pavement lay Peter Bolton. His hands were pressed to a reddening circle on his coat, and his face was drawn into an expression of anxious fear. As I bent over him, a look of recognition flashed into his eyes. And even in the pangs of dissolution a sardonic smile drew down the corners of his mouth, while has sarcastic voice, reduced in volume till it was scarcely more than a whisper, drawled painfully: "You’ve missed your chance, Hampden. You’ll never get rich now. I fought--you all--and I’ve beat--you all." He paused in weakness, and the murmur of voices about me filled my ears. There was scarce a sympathetic tone to be heard, and thrice the words floated to me: "It’s a wonder he didn’t get it before." Peter Bolton had lived without good will to man, and he was dying without man’s regret. He summoned up his failing energies and continued: "If I had another day, your--man--Kendrick--would--be--smashed!" The last word was spoken almost as a hiss. Then the blood welled up in his throat, and with a convulsive effort to rise he fell back and was still. The Bolton-Kendrick Feud was over. *CHAPTER XXXI* *THE BROKEN WEB* With the death of Peter Bolton there was an immediate slackening of the tension in the commercial exchanges. The shock of his sudden end turned men’s minds for a little from the market-place, and when they turned back it was not the same. The enginery of evil that he had set in motion to crush Wharton Kendrick ran slower and slower, and at last came to a stop. "The El Dorado Bank has thrown up the sponge," said Partridge when I met him at noon. "They were acting for Bolton more than for themselves in this deal. Now that the old fox has gone, they have lost stomach for the fight." And with this assurance, I walked the street with the buoyancy of heart that follows a hard-won victory. I was still in exultant frame of mind when I came a few minutes later upon the personification of Gloom. It was Parks. His mouth was drawn down into an expression of somber weariness of the world. A piece of court-plaster ornamented his cheek; and his right eye was swollen and discolored until it resembled nothing so much as an overripe tomato. "Why, what’s the matter?" I asked with exuberant spirit. "You look like the day after the fight." He looked resentfully at me, with a sad shake of the head. "Sir," he exclaimed, "it is unfair to jest. I have suffered the burial of my hopes. I am done with the affairs of life." "What!" I cried. "Have you given up the revolution? Have you abandoned the battle for the rights of the people?"