as well that Daylight played closely at first,
for he was astounded by the multitudes of sharks--"ground-sharks," he
called them--that flocked about him.

He saw through their schemes readily enough, and even marveled that
such numbers of them could find sufficient prey to keep them going.
Their rascality and general dubiousness was so transparent that he
could not understand how any one could be taken in by them.

And then he found that there were sharks and sharks. Holdsworthy
treated him more like a brother than a mere fellow-clubman, watching
over him, advising him, and introducing him to the magnates of the
local financial world. Holdsworthy's family lived in a delightful
bungalow near Menlo Park, and here Daylight spent a number of weekends,
seeing a fineness and kindness of home life of which he had never
dreamed. Holdsworthy was an enthusiast over flowers, and a half
lunatic over raising prize poultry; and these engrossing madnesses were
a source of perpetual joy to Daylight, who looked on in tolerant good
humor. Such amiable weaknesses tokened the healthfulness of the man,
and drew Daylight closer to him. A prosperous, successful business man
without great ambition, was Daylight's estimate of him--a man too
easily satisfied with the small stakes of the game ever to launch out
in big play.

On one such week-end visit, Holdsworthy let him in on a good thing, a
good little thing, a brickyard at Glen Ellen. Daylight listened
closely to the other's description of the situation. It was a most
reasonable venture, and Daylight's one objection was that it was so
small a matter and so far out of his line; and he went into it only as
a matter of friendship, Holdsworthy explaining that he was himself
already in a bit, and that while it was a good thing, he would be
compelled to make sacrifices in other directions in order to develop
it. Daylight advanced the capital, fifty thousand dollars, and, as he
laughingly explained afterward, "I was stung, all right, but it wasn't
Holdsworthy that did it half as much as those blamed chickens and
fruit-trees of his."

It was a good lesson, however, for he learned that there were few
faiths in the business world, and that even the simple, homely faith of
breaking bread and eating salt counted for little in the face of a
worthless brickyard and fifty thousand dollars in cash.

But the sharks and sharks of various orders and degrees, he concluded,
were on the surface. Deep