thicker than snowflakes, and, through
the foolish policy of the company,
foreclosures had to be made. Grayson went
to the wall like the rest of us. I asked
him what he had done with the money
he had made. He had given away a
great deal to poorer kindred; he had
paid his dead father's debts; he had
played away a good deal, and he had
lost the rest. His faith was still
imperturbable. He had a dozen rectangles of
``dirt,'' and from these, he said, it would
all come back some day. Still, he felt
the sudden poverty keenly, but he faced
it as he did any other physical fact in
life--dauntless. He used to be fond of
saying that no one thing could make
him miserable. But he would talk with
mocking earnestness about some much-
dreaded combination; and a favorite
phrase of his--which got to have peculiar
significance--was ``the cohorts of hell,''
who closed in on him when he was sick
and weak, and who fell back when he
got well. He had one strange habit,
too, from which I got comfort. He
would deliberately walk into and defy
any temptation that beset him. That
was the way he strengthened himself,
he said. I knew what his temptation