There was no use in repining. Luck had been against him, that was all. Some men had been guilty of what he had done, and they had been able to bluff it out. His bluff had been called, and he was now going to jail to pay his debt of honor. Perhaps the copy-book was right when it declared honesty to be the best policy. And yet he could not help feeling that fate had played him a mean trick. To put in his possession at the same moment a large sum of money and the information that the most powerful group of capitalists in America had determined to take hold of a certain railroad and re-establish it, and to have thus the possibility put before him at the very hour when he had discovered that perhaps he had a chance to win the woman he loved, if only he could approach her on an equality of fortune--this temptation just then was too great to withstand. He had yielded, and for a little while it had seemed as though he was about to succeed. Twenty-four hours more and he could have put back the money he had borrowed--for so he liked to look on his act. That money once restored, he would have waited patiently for the rest of his profit. Thereafter he could have afforded to be honest; he was resolved never to overstep the law again; he would have kept the letter of it vigorously--if only he had escaped detection that once. But blind chance smote him down from behind. Suddenly, without an hour's warning, the leader of the group of sustaining capitalists dropped dead; his heart had failed, worn out by the friction and the strain. The market broke; and all who had bought stocks on a margin were sold out instantly and inexorably. Then the supporting orders came in and prices were pushed up again; but it was too late. Two days before, or a day after, that capitalist might have died without having by his death unwittingly caused an arrest. And as the hansom rolled on toward the Battery the prisoner had again a resentment against the capitalist for choosing so unfortunate a day to die. Now the end had come; of course, he had been unable to replace the money he had taken, and there was nothing for him to do but to fly. But instead of going to Canada, and hiding his trail, and then slipping across to Europe, he had been foolish enough to come here to New York to have another glimpse of the woman for the love of whom he had become a thief. Once more luck had been against him; as it happened, she had gone out of town for Decoration Day; and instead of taking ship to Europe, he had waited. Only that Saturday morning he had met her brother and had been told of her return to town. But when he was about to call on her that afternoon, the gray-eyed man had called on him; and here he was on his way to his trial, and he had not seen her, after all.