u," I said at
last as we turned out of Broad Street into Wall. "It seems as if you work
with magic. Everything you touch turns to gold."

He wheeled on me. "Yes, Jim, you are right. Gold, heartless, soulless
gold. But what is the dross good for? What is it good for to me? To-day I
suppose I have made the biggest one-man killing in the history of 'the
Street.' I must be an easy twenty-five millions richer in gold than I was
this morning, and I had enough then to dam the East River and a good
section of the North. But tell me, Jim, tell me, what can it buy in this
world that I have not got? I had health and happiness, perfect health,
pure happiness, when I did not have a thousand all told. Now I have fifty
millions, and I know how to get fifty or five hundred and fifty more any
time I care to take them, and I have only physical and mental hell. No
beggar in all the world is so poor in happiness as I. Tell me, tell me,
Jim, in the name of God, if there is one--for already the game of gold is
robbing me of my faith in God--where can I buy a little, just a little
happiness with all this cursed yellow dirt? What will it get me in the
next world, Jim Randolph, what will it get me? If I had died when I was
poor, I think you will agree with me that, if there is a heaven, I should
have stood an even chance of getting there. Now on a day like to-day, when
you see the results of my work, the results of my handling of unlimited
gold, you must agree that if I were taken off I should stand more than an
even show of landing in hell where the sulphur is thickest and the flames
are hottest."

We were at the entrance of Randolph & Randolph's office as he poured out
this terrible torrent of bitterness. He glared at me as a dungeon prisoner
might glare at his keeper for his answer to "Where can I find liberty?" I
had no words to answer him. As I noted the awful changes his new life was
making in every line of his face, the rigid hardness, the haunted, nervous
look of desperation, which seemed a forerunner of madness, I could not
see, either, where his millions brought any happiness. His hair, which
once was smooth and orderly, hung over his forehead in an unparted mass of
tangled curls, and here and there showed a streak of white. Bob Brownley
was still handsome, even more fascinating than before the mercury entered
his soul, but it was that wild, awful beauty of the caged lion, lashing
himself into madness with memories of his lost freedom