When the stockholders of the Massachusetts Iron Company finally demanded a reorganization, he had employed the best legal talent and thrust in every delay of the law. The fight had gone on year after year, from court to court. Orders had been entered and dissolved; decrees had been made and reversed; hearings had been granted by superior courts, and rehearings, but the end, long delayed, came finally. The stockholders had applied for a rule. It was the most summary proceeding known to the law. To-morrow he must pay the money, or go to prison a felon. The end loomed like the ragged outlines of a cliff. To Carper this end seemed atrociously unjust. He had worked so hard, so hard: the best that was in him; the good days of his life had been given up to this labor It had been his boyhood dream to be a factor in great affairs,--the bitter labor of his youth, and, in part, the realization of his middle life. He had cut every other thing away with a hand that never once had trembled. It was his right to win, if there was any justice anywhere. But to-morrow was the end. To-morrow the court would strip him naked as a bone. He had heard many a sleek pastor discourse glibly upon the eternal justice of Providence. Then he believed it cant with a smattering of truth. Now it was entirely clear that it was cant--but false; a pleasant lie like the housewife tale of fairies. Carper took the cigar from between his teeth and dropped it on the hearth. The game of life was an ugly game. He confessed that he had lost interest in its play. Now that the thought suggested he saw that he had been losing interest all along. It was inertia he had been fighting--the plague of inertia, and for no gain at all. It was a world where, if one sat still, one wasted with monotony; and if one labored, it was only for the purpose of building ships to fly in the air, which, when they were all completed, sat stupidly on the earth or by hap toppled heavily upon the builder, crushing out his heart. He could not understand why men had sometimes said that life was good. Carper had looked, he believed, into not a few chambers of the temple. The same hooded shape sat in each. If fame was given, the skull was pretty generally crushed with the crown. If wealth was given, the back was broken with the weight. If love was given,--yes, the heart was usually broken with it,--love! Carper arose and went over to a cabinet in the wall, unlocked the door and took out a big photograph, which he brought over to the fire. It was the picture of a woman, young, beautiful, quivering with the power of life; the mass of dark hair was caught back from her forehead; the eyes were wide, clear, transparent; the nose was straight as the edges of a die, and the throat round, full, marvellously moulded. In the set of the head there was pride of lineage, and the relentless rigor of purity. It was a fine face looking out from a blameless life, strong, innocent, exacting as a child.