No, he could not have disposed of that, even had he so desired; but everything else, the house on Tenth Street,--built originally for a country-seat, in times when the Astor House was considered rather far uptown,--bonds, scrip, and stocks, disappeared as utterly as had they never been; for Roland's father, stricken with that form of dementia which, to the complete discouragement of virtue, battens on men that have led the chastest lives, had, at that age in which the typical rake is forced to haul his standard down, surrendered himself to senile debauchery, and in the lap of a female of uncertain attractions--of whose mere existence no one had been previously aware--placed title-deeds and certificates of stock. In a case such as this the appeal of the rightful heir is listened to with such patience that judge and jury too have been known to pass away and leave the tale unended. And Roland, when the earliest dismay had in a measure subsided, saw himself closeted with lawyers who offered modicums of hope in return for proportionate fees. Then came a run up the Hudson, the welcomeless greeting which waited him there, and the enervating imbecility of his great aunt, whose fingers, mummified by gout, were tenacious enough on the strings of her purse. That episode flitted by, leaving on memory's camera only the degrading tableau of coin burrowed for and unobtained. And through it all filtered torturesome uncertainties, the knowledge of his entire inability to make money, the sense of strength misspent, the perplexities that declined to take themselves away, forebodings of the morrow, nay of the day even as well, the unbanishable dread of want.