riven by sneering bullies. I saw a great
company of scowling men, wailing women, and little children, with drawn,
pinched faces, and they seemed to point at me as they plodded past,
muttering, "But for you." Then, to the clanking of chains, hoarse
curses, and the sharp whip-snap, lines upon lines of men in striped
suits, with cropped heads, and faces branded by despair, filed up.
Faintly a mutter of sobs and groans echoed, "But for you." The clanking
ceased; there came the slow shuffling of many feet, and a procession of
men, bearing stretchers on which lay shrouded figures, advanced into
view. Like a solemn knell upon my ear smote the reproach, "Suicides
because of you." And now out of the caldron sprang a mob of goblin
dollar-signs compounded of blood-red snakes and copper bars, that
danced a mad saraband around my chair to a weird chorus of, "But for
you." Transfixed and aghast I stared at the train of awful forms. So
real were they, they seemed almost to touch me as they swept onward. At
last, with a convulsive effort, I threw off the spell, banished the
phantasms of my frightened brain, and shook myself together with a: "You
have work ahead and dreaming will not do it for you."

Back into my mind trooped the unanswerable, cold realities. There could
be no doubt that the announcements in the morning papers would surprise
those who had been led to expect an allotment of one share in twenty or
thirty and had subscribed accordingly, and likewise those who had
expected to get all, or at least one out of two. There might be murmurs
of foul play and a general suspicion that trickery had been practised.
Looking at the situation, I saw that upon me the chief blame must fall,
and that it behooved me to think soundly and quickly over what had best
be done to protect from the impending massacre those whom I had lured
into the ambush. The smoke-wreaths had all gone out of my brain now, and
as the known factors began to group themselves symmetrically before my
mind I forced myself to face certain all-too-evident facts: Rogers and
Stillman had plainly hoisted the black flag; they had broken all their
promises to me and assuredly had no intention of carrying out to the
public the pledges I had made on their behalf; they would handle this
affair as they had others I knew about--only to extract the greatest
number of dollars from it--and in the course of their operations I and
my friends would probably be sent through the crusher wit