Sam sat at his desk, fingering the yellow paper lying before him and fighting to get his head clear. “The old coward. The damned old coward,” he muttered; “any one could have done that.” When Lewis came into Sam’s office he found his chief sitting at his desk fingering the telegram and muttering to himself. When Sam handed him the wire he came around and stood beside Sam, his hand upon his shoulder. “Well, do not blame yourself for that,” he said, with quick understanding. “I don’t,” Sam muttered; “I do not blame myself for anything. I am a result, not a cause. I am trying to think. I am not through yet. I am going to begin again when I get things thought out.” Lewis went out of the room leaving him to his thoughts. For an hour he sat there reviewing his life. When he came to the day that he had humiliated Colonel Tom, there came back to his mind the sentence he had written on the sheet of paper while the vote was being counted. “The best men spend their lives seeking truth.” Suddenly he came to a decision and, calling Lewis, began laying out a plan of action. His head cleared and the ring came back into his voice. To Lewis he gave an option on his entire holdings of Edwards Consolidated stocks and bonds and to him also he entrusted the clearing up of deal after deal in which he was interested. Then, calling a broker, he began throwing a mass of stock on the market. When Lewis told him that Crofts was ‘phoning wildly about town to find him, and was with the help of another banker supporting the market and taking Sam’s stocks as fast as offered, he laughed and giving Lewis instructions regarding the disposal of his monies walked out of the office, again a free man and again seeking the answer to his problem. He made no attempt to answer Sue’s wire. He was restless to get at something he had in his mind. He went to his apartments and packed a bag and from there disappeared saying goodbye to no one. In his mind was no definite idea of where he was going or what he was going to do. He knew only that he would follow the message his hand had written. He would try to spend his life seeking truth. BOOK III CHAPTER I One day when the youth Sam McPherson was new in the city he went on a Sunday afternoon to a down-town theatre to hear a sermon. The sermon was delivered by a small dark-skinned Boston man, and seemed to the young McPherson scholarly and well thought out. “The greatest man is he whose deeds affect the greatest number of lives,” the speaker had said, and the thought had stuck in Sam’s mind. Now walking along the street carrying his travelling bag, he remembered the sermon and the thought and shook his head in doubt. “What I have done here in this city must have affected thousands of lives,” he mused, and felt a quickening of his blood at just letting go of his thoughts as he had not dared do since that day when, by breaking his word to Sue, he had started on his career as a business giant.