ever make an idler, you'll never stand that life, but you want
to try it. Very well. I'm going to give you a check. It's yours. Play
with it all you want. You'll get it taken away from you in two years at
the most. When that happens come back to me, do you understand, where
you belong! Blood's thicker than water, my boy; there's something in
father and son sticking together, doing something that counts! Here,
take this."

And he placed in his hand a check which read:

Pay to the order of Thomas Beauchamp Crocker
Fifty thousand dollars
JOTHAM B. CROCKER.

CHAPTER V

DANIEL DRAKE, THE MULTI-MILLIONAIRE

A week after his interview with his father, Tom Crocker entered the
great shadowy library of the Drakes in response to an invitation from
the father. At this time, when Wall Street was approaching that dramatic
phase which is inevitable in social transformations, when dominant and
outstanding individualities succumb to the obliterating rise of
bureaucracies, there was no more picturesque personality than Daniel
Drake. He had come to New York several years before, awaited as a
vaulting spirit who played the game recklessly and who would never cease
to aspire until he had forced his way to the top or been utterly broken
in the attempt.

His career had bordered on the fantastic. As a boy the _Wanderlust_ had
driven him over the face of the globe. A shrewd capacity for making
money of anything to which he put his hand had carried him through
strange professions. He had been a pedler on the Mississippi, cook on a
tramp steamer to Australia, boxed in minor professional encounters,
exhibited as a trick bicycle rider, served as a soldier of fortune up
and down Central America, and returned to his native country to
establish a small fortune in the field of the country fairs.

With the acquisition of capital, he became conservative and
industrious. Reconciled with his family, he had secured the necessary
funds to attempt an operation in the wheat market which, conducted on a
reasonable scale, netted him a handsome profit and enlarged his
activities. His genius for manipulation and trading, which was soon
recognized, brought him into the services of big industries. He made
money rapidly, and married impulsively against the advice of his friends
a woman of social prominence who cared absolutely nothing about him--a
fact which he was the last to perceive.

He next undertook a daring operation, the buying up of