The Mena weekly star., 1909-03-25
CHAPTER l. The Man with the Moies.


 on furlough, and preparing to return to a task big enough to attract him in spite of its exile and hardships, he had visited the son of friend at liar. ward. They were walking through the corridors of one of the private dormi- tories where the boy roomed. Rather grimly the soldiers eyes were noting marble wainscoting and tiled floors, and contrasting this academic en- yironment with his own at West Point. A caustic comment rose to his lips. hut 1t was not uttered, for he heard the sharp bark of pistol, followed by a thud, and a crackle as of breaking glass.
 Do you fellows amuse yourselves shooting up the dormitory?" said be- The boy halted; he had gone white.
 'It came from Mcrcer's room!" he cried, and ran across the corridor to A door with the usual labelling of two visiting cards The door was not locked Entering, they passed into vestibule, thence through another door which stood open. For many a day after the colonel could see just how the slender young figure looked, the shoulders In huddle on the study table, one arm swinging nerveless: be- side him, on the floor, revolver and a broken glass bottle. The latter must have made the cracking sound. Some dark red liquid, soaking the open sheets of newspaper, filled the room with the pungent odor of alco- hol Only the top of the lads head showed-a curly, silky, dark brown head; but even before the colonel lift ed 1t he had seen few thick drops mating the brown curls. He laid the head back gently and his hand slipped to the boys wrist.
 No use, Ralph" he said in the sub dued tones that the voice takes un- consciously in the presence of death.
 And Endy was going to help him." almost sobbed Ralph. He told me he would. Oh. why couldn't he have trusted his friends!"
 The colonel was looking at the newspaper-"Was 1t money?" said he; for a glance at the dabbled sheet had brought him the headings of the stock quotations: Another Sharp Break fin Stocks. New London Records" It had been money. Later, after what needed to be done was over. after doc tors and officers of the law were gone, Col Winter heard the wretched story. young, reckless, fatally attractive Southerner, rich friends, college so- cieties, joyous times nothing really wicked or vicious, only surrender to youth and friendship and pleasure, and then the day of reckoning-duns college warnings, the menace of black disgrace. The young fellow was an orphan, with no near kindred save one brother much older than he The brother was reputed to be rich, ac- cording 10 southern standards. and young Mercer, who had just come into a modest patrimony of his own, invest ed in his brothers ventures. As to the character of these ventures, whether fiimsy or substantial. the col onel's informants were absolutely ignorant All they knew of the elder Mercer was that he was often in New York and had "a lot to do with Wall street" He wasn't broker; no, he was trying to raise money to hang on to some big properties that he had; and the stocks seemed to be going al remarkable rates just now. the bot tom dropping out of the market. If a certain stock of the Mercers-they didn't know the name-corld be kept above 27 he would pull through. Col Winter made no comment, but he remembered that when he had studied the mornings stock-market pages fol himself, he had noted bad slump ir the southern steels," and Underwater on the toboggan slide; off three te four points, declining from 27 and fraction to 23."
 Another victim of the Wall street pirates" was the colonefs silent judg ment on the tragedy. Lucky for hel his mothers dead"
 The next morning he had returned and had gone to his young friends rooms
 The boy was still full of the horrol of the day before. Mercers brother was in Cambridge, he said-arrivint that morning from New York End! is going to fetch him round to get hin out of the reporters way sometim' this evening; maybe there's somethinl can do"--this in explanation his declining to dine with the colone As the two entered the rooms, Win ter was little in advance, and caugh the first glimpse of a man sitting In big mission armchair, his head sun on his breast. So absorbed was thi man in his own distempered musing that the newcomers approach al not arouse him. He sat with knitte brows and clenched hands, starln into vacancy; his rigid and pain features set in a ghastly intensity thought. There was suffering in th look; but there was more; the coione who had been living among the SC pent passions of the orient kne deadly anger when he saw 1t; It wa branded on the face before him II voluntarily he fell back; he felt as
 he had blundered in on a naked sou Noiselessly he slipped out of the rahs of vision. He spoke loudly, halting ask some question about the rooms this made a moments pause.