Not a thing
had passed his lips since he had left home in Harlem at eight o'clock
that morning and he had told Annie that he would be home for lunch.
There was no use staying downtown any longer. For three weary hours he
had trudged from office to office seeking employment, answering
advertisements, asking for work of any kind, ready to do no matter what,
but all to no purpose. Nobody wanted him at any price. What was the good
of a man being willing to work if there was no one to employ him? A nice
look-out certainly. Hardly a dollar left and no prospect of getting any
more. He hardly had the courage to return home and face Annie. With a
muttered exclamation of impatience he spat from his mouth the
half-consumed cigarette which was hanging from his lip, and crossing
Broadway, walked listlessly in the direction of Park Place.

He had certainly made a mess of things, yet at one time, not so long
ago, what a brilliant future life seemed to have in store for him! No
boy had ever been given a better start. He remembered the day he left
home to go to Yale; he recalled his father's kind words of
encouragement, his mother's tears. Ah, if his mother had only lived!
Then, maybe, everything would have been different. But she died during
his freshman year, carried off suddenly by heart failure. His father
married again, a young woman twenty years his junior, and that had
started everything off wrong. The old home life had gone forever. He had
felt like an intruder the first time he went home and from that day his
father's roof had been distasteful to him. Yes, that was the beginning
of his hard luck. He could trace all his misfortunes back to that. He
couldn't stand for mother-in-law, a haughty, selfish, supercilious,
ambitious creature who had little sympathy for her predecessor's child,
and no scruple in showing it.

Then, at college, he had met Robert Underwood, the popular upper-class
man, who had professed to take a great fancy to him. He, a timid young
freshman, was naturally flattered by the friendship of the dashing,
fascinating sophomore and thus commenced that unfortunate intimacy which
had brought about the climax to his troubles. The suave, amiable
Underwood, whom he soon discovered to be a gentlemanly scoundrel,
borrowed his money and introduced him into the "sporty" set, an
exclusive circle into which, thanks to his liberal allowance from home,
he was welcomed with open arms. With a youth of his proclivities and
in