Young Beecher, pacing restlessly, nodding and smiling, searched in the crowd without quite admitting to himself what it was he sought. In the short period of his return, he had gone into many different sets, always retaining the prerogatives of his own. The women, besides those of the younger married women whom he knew, were of the opera, the stage, one or two, even, whose names were electrically displayed in vaudeville. He was caught up, greeted enthusiastically, and extricated himself with deftness, seeking in a general way to reach the great fireplace near which he had detected the figure of Mrs. Kildair. The men, without exception, were of his own kind—of that second generation which is the peculiar problem of America. They were strong, well put together, with heads chiseled somewhat on the vigorous lines of the father spirits, condemned by the accident of wealth to the most un-American of professions, the idler. Without the mental languor of the foreign dilettante, consumed in reality by their own imprisoned energy, they were a restless, dissatisfied testimony of the error of their own civilization, the inability of the great, barbaric, money-acquiring American to comprehend the uses of wealth. Tonight, threatened with tomorrow’s disaster, stirred by the restlessness of the multitude, this excess of baffled energy was felt everywhere: at the bar, in the Anglo-Saxon intensity; at the faro table where the play had a certain desperate counterpart of the spirit that had assembled the future; in the momentary sudden accesses of gaiety that began to spread through the hesitant crowd, as an overturned bottle spreads its fluid over the cloth. Beecher, too, without comprehending it, felt the stimulus, awakening all the nervous unemployed funds of energy within him and the intoxication of movement and laughter that brought him a sudden feverish hilarity, brought also a sense of unrest and dissatisfaction. Underneath all the over-excited spirits of frivolity was a current of grave apprehension which he felt in the occasional groupings of men and the low snatches of conversation which reached him. "Bo Lynch’s cleaned out." "—not the only one." "—and thousands thrown on the market." "Eddie Fontaine’s crowd." "Copper’ll blow up higher than a kite!" "—if Slade goes too." "They say there’s a line formed in front of the Atlantic." In his progress he encountered Jack Lindabury, lank and broad-shouldered, with the magnificent shell of a head that might have been set on the shoulders of a Gladstone. They shook hands with cordiality. "Devil of a mess about Majendie," said Lindabury. "Are you hit?" "Of course; Eddie Fontaine’s had us all in on his tip. Some of the crowd are liable to be wiped out. They tell me Bo Lynch had plunged every cent in the world." "Shouldn’t wonder," said Beecher, reflecting. "Is he here?" "Sure; he’s the bartender," said Lindabury.