stock-gambling. She has worked it out that every dollar one man makes,
another loses; that the one who makes gives nothing in return for what he
gets away with; and that the other fellow's loss makes him and his as
miserable as would robbery to the same amount. Yet she realises that she
must get back those millions stolen from her father and is willing to
smother her conscience to attempt it, provided she takes no unfair
advantage of the other players. The other day she said to me, 'I have
decided, because of my duty to my father, to put away my prejudice against
gambling, but no duty to him or to any one can justify me in playing with
marked cards.' Jim, there is food for reflection for you and me, don't you
think so?"

I did not argue it with him, for, after that Saturday's outburst, I had
made up my mind to avoid stirring Bob up unnecessarily. Also, I had to
admit to myself that the things he had then said had raised some
uncomfortable thoughts in me, thoughts that made me glance less
confidently now and then at the old sign of Randolph & Randolph and at the
big ledger which showed that I, an ordinary citizen of a free country, was
the absolute possessor of more money than a hundred thousand of my fellow
beings together could accumulate in a lifetime, although each one had
worked harder, longer, more conscientiously, and with perhaps more ability
than I.

As to how Beulah Sands's code had affected my friend, I was ignorant. For
the first time in our association I was completely in the dark as to what
he was doing stockwise. Up to that Saturday I was the first to whom he
would rush for congratulations when he struck it rich over others on the
exchange, and he invariably sought me for consolation when the boys
"upper-cut him hard," as he would put it. Now he never said a word about
his trading. I saw that his account with the house was inactive, that his