It was a small thing, but costly to his feelings, since, for every one of these moments redolent of suffering and sadness, his own soul fiber, delicate and thin as a silk thread, must afterward pay in the reaction of a deep depression.  To him echoes meant more than positive sounds, and the tears in his mother’s voice, the unshed tears in her eyes, brought him a suffering so intense and genuine that when he went out the thought of returning to either of the stricken houses where she needed him was like returning to a jail.  Then, too, there was the unexpressed fear which gnawed incessantly at his heart, that, in spite of his belief in Hamilton, business disaster might lie ahead.  He wrote less often and with more effort to Loraine Haswell—­and thought longingly of Marcia Terroll, who had forbidden him to see her.

* * * * *

Such a pregnant item of news as Hamilton Burton’s accident could not long be kept from the Street and the public.  On the morning following the occurrence it burst into print—­and for a time the chorus of invective was silenced.

But the hands that had been raised to pull him down could not be stayed.  He himself had never halted when the Gods of Chance had tossed into his lap a mighty advantage.  At the first announcement that “Ursus Major” lay ill, perhaps mortally hurt, the trampled prices of securities began to revive like dusty blossoms under a shower.  Day long came damp extras from the press heralding a bull day almost as wild and swift in its price recovery as yesterday’s bear day had been terrific in its avalanche.

From post to post the deep voice of Len Haswell and other Burton lieutenants thundered in an effort to stem the altered tide—­but they were generals of brigade without their field marshal, guessing blindly at a plan which had not been revealed by the master-tactician.  Into the eyes of Jack Staples stole a glitter of premonitory triumph as he met them and beat them back.  Burton millions were melting like hailstones falling on hot metal, and when the session ended Len Haswell turned away with an empty face.  For two days he had almost forgotten, in his battle-lust, his own heart-ache.  Now it was over and because he had followed Hamilton Burton with his own small fortunes as a camp-follower trails an army corps, he knew that he was wiped out and ruined.  Hamilton might lose many millions, and “come back,” but he and many like him were irretrievably done for.

One day when Hamilton had been ill for a week and had not yet emerged from the distorted land of delirium, Tom Burton strolled, as immaculate and well groomed as ever, into the National Union Club, and looked about for a bridge quorum of his cronies.  The doctors held out hope and the father sought relaxation from anxiety.  His face was flushed, for old Thomas Burton, too, had felt sorely the strain of these days, and had sought his own means of dulling apprehension’s edge.  His brain was not versatile in such matters.