It came home to me, as I stood there in the night
upon the open street, that there was not one soul
among all the city's sleeping millions who owed me
aught but harm, and that even those who had
drunk the wine of my hospitality had done so
more in fear than in friendship. I had no friends
but those who were bound to me in some devil's
bargain — ^no kith, no kin, nor the memory of a
mother's love. As I lingered there, like some out-
cast beast waiting for day to drive me to my lair,
I envied, with a fierce hatred and with a bitter and
passionate pity for myself, those to whom Fate had
been more kind and given home and wife and chil-
dren, or at least the affection of their fellow men,
and I envied the lads I had known in college who
led clean lives and who had shunned me — they
knew not why — and the happy-go-lucky Quirk and
his busy wife; and even old Tuckerman Toddle-
ham, in his dingy office in Barristers' Hall.
192



CHAPTER IX

DAYBREAK found me still wandering in the
streets, haunted by the fear that the police
might already be upon my track and furious at the
thought that one foolish step should have changed
me from a prosperous and powerful member of the
bar into a fugitive. Often in earlier days I had
pitied the wretches who would come slinking into
our office after nightfall, empty their pockets of
gold and notes — taken often, no doubt, by force
or fraud from others — and pour it out before us,
begging for our aid to save them from punishment.
