The log cabin Democrat., 1909-11-13
CHAPTER |.
The Man with the Moles,

ter saw Cary Mercer was under cir cunstances calculated to fix the incl dent firmly in his memory In the year 1903, home from the Philippines 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- vironment with his own at West Point :. caustic comment rose to his lips, but 1t was not uttered, for he heard the sharp bark of a pistol, followed by thud, and crackle as of breaking glass.
 Do you fellows amuse yourselves shooting up the dormitory?' said he The boy halted; he had gone white
 Tt came from Mercer's room," he cried, and ran across the corridor to door with the usual labelling of two Sioieih6 Sdi Ht ucOI Was uOJ 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, revolver and vol n1n must have made the cracking sound Some dark red liquid. soaking the open sheets of 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 1t he had seen a 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 dabbed 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 done was over, after doc tors and officers of the law were gone, Col. Winter heard the wretched story. A young, reckless, fatally attractive Southerner, rich friends, college so- cieties, joyous times; nothing really wicked or vicious, only a 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 to 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 fimsy or substantial. the col onels 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 10 raise money co 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 bad slump in the southern steels," and Underwater on the toboggan slide; off three to four points, declining from 27 and a fraction to 23.
 Another victim of the Wall street pirates" was the colonePs silent judg- ment on the tragedy. Lucky for her his mothers dead"
 The next morning ne ndu TetuTHeu and had gone to his young friends rooms
 The boy was still full of the horror of the day before. Mercers 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 I can do"-this in explanation of his declining to dine with the colonel. As the two entered the rooms, Win ter was little in advance. and caught the first glimpse of 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 ghastly intensity of .xo,oht Tbora wac suffering in the