Bob Brownley had got to his feet; he was slipping the shackles of that
fiery, romantic, Southern passion that years in college and Wall Street
had taught him to keep prisoner. His eyes were flashing sparks. His
nostrils vibrated like a deer buck's in the autumn woods. He faced me with
his hands clinched.

"Jim Randolph," he went on, "as I listened to that girl's story of the
terrible cruelty and devilish treachery practised by the human hyenas you
and I associate with, human hyenas who, when in search of dirty
dollars--the only thing they know anything about--put to shame the real
beasts of the wilds--when I listened, I tell you that I felt it would not
give me a twinge of conscience to put a ball through that slick scoundrel
Reinhart. Yes, and that hired cur of his, too, who prostitutes a good
family name and position, and an inherited ability the Almighty intended
for more honest uses than the trapping of victims on whose purses his
gutter-born master has set lecherous eyes. And, Jim, as I listened, a
troop of old friends invaded my memory--friends whom I have not seen since
before I went to Harvard, friends with whom I spent many a happy hour in
my old Virginia home, friends born of my imagination, stalwart, rugged
crusaders, who carried the sword and the cross and the banner inscribed
'For Honour and for God.' Old friends who would troop into my boyhood and
trumpet, 'Bob, don't forget, when you're a man, that the goal is honour,
and the code: Do unto your neighbour as you would have your neighbour do
unto you. Don't forget that millions is the crest of the groundlings.'
And, Jim, I thought my friends looked at me with reproachful eyes, as
they said, 'You are well on the road, Bob Brownley, and in time your heart
and soul will bear the hall-mark of the snaky S on the two upright bars,
and you will be but a frenzied fellow in the Dirty Dollar army.' Jim, Jim
Randolph, as I listened to that agonising tale of the changing of that