The Tupelo journal., 1909-03-12
CHAPTER /.
The Man with the MoIes.

IS hiSt tlllC tudl wi. ItuDCiL WIN
ter saw Cary Mercer was under cir
cumstances calculated to fix the incl
dent firmly in his memory. In the
year 1903, home from the Philippines
on furlough. AMI preparing to return
to a task big enough to attract him
in spite of it's exile and hardships, he
had visited the son of a friend at Har-
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-
vironment with his own at West Point.
A caustic comment rose to his lips,
but it was not uttered, for he heard
the sharp bark of a" pistol, followed by
a thud, and a crackle as of breaking
glass.
DO you fellows amuse yourselves
shooting up the dormitory?" said he.
The boy halted; he had gone white.
1T came from MERGERS 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 a
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 a huddle on the study
table, one arm swinging nerveless; be-
side him, on the floor, a revolver and
a broken glass bottle. The latter
must have made the cracking sound.
Some dark red liquid, soaking the
open sheets of a newspaper, filled the
room with the pungent odor of alec
hol, Only the top of the lads head
. showed-a curly, silky, dark brown
head; but even before the colonel lift
ed it he had seer a few thick drops
mating the brown curls. He laid the
head back gently and his hand slipped
to the boys wrist.
mo use, Ralph" he said in the sub
dued tones that the voice takes IN
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 it money!" said he;
for a glance at the dabbled sheet had
brought him the headings of the stock
quotations: Another Sharp Break
in Stocks. New London Records" 1t
had been money. Later, after what
needed to be lone was over, after doc
tors and officers of the law were gone,
Col. Winter heard the w%retched story.
A young, reckless, fatally attractive
Southerner, rich friends, college So
c~ieties, joyous times; nothing really
wicked or vicious, only a surrender to
youth and friendship and pleasure,
and hen 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, &C.
cording to southern standards, and
young Mercer, who had just come into
a AlOoCo pdlliIIohy VI liz o"hy IhFOot
ed in his brothers ventures. AS to
the character of these ventures,
whether f1imsy 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 a 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 at
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-could 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 for
himself, he had noted dad slump in
the southern ~steels," and Underwater
on the ~toboggan slide; off three to
four points, declining from q and a
fraction to 23."
Another victim of the Wall street
pirates was the colonel's silent judg-
ment on the tragedy. Lucky for her
his mothers dead"
The next morning he had returned
and had gone to his young friends
rooms. y
The boy was still full of the horror
Of the day before. MERGERS brother
was in Cambridge, he said-arriving
that morning from New York. "Endy
is going to fetch him round to get him
out of the reporters way sometime
this evening; maybe there's something
| can do"-this In explanation of
his declining to dine with the colonel.
AS the two entered the rooms, Win
ter was a little in advance, and caught
the first glimpse of a man sitting in a
big mission armchair, his head sunk
on his breast. So absorbed was this
man in his own distempered musings
that the newcomers approach did
not arouse him. He sat with knitted
brows and clenched hands, staring
into vacancy; his rigid and pallid
features set in a CHASTITY intensity OF
thought. There was suffering in the
look; but there was more; the colonel,
who had been living among the SER
pent passions of the orient, knew
deadly anger when he saw it; it was
branded on the face before him. In
voluntarily he fell back; he felt as If
he had Numbered in On a naked soul.
Noiselessly he slipped out of the range
of vision. He spoke loudly, hating to