He had toiled hard and well; he had won. The shadow of '99 was
still over him, but the year and a new ambition had lessened its
blackness. Friends were legion in the great metropolis; he won his
way into the hearts and confidence of new associates and renewed
fellowship with the old. Invitations came thickly upon him, but he
resolutely turned his back upon most of them. He was not socially
hungry in these days.

Once a week he wrote to his father, but there never was a reply.
He did not expect one, for James Bansemer, in asking him to write,
had vowed that his son should never hear from him again until he
could speak as a free man and a chastened one. True to his promise,
Graydon instituted no movement to secure a pardon. He did, by
a strong personal appeal, persuade Denis Harbert to drop further
prosecution. There were enough indictments against his father to
have kept him behind the bars for life.

Elias Droom had rooms in Eighth Avenue not a great distance from
Herald Square. He was quite proud of his new quarters. They had
many of the unpleasant features of the old ones in Wells Street,
but they were less garish in their affront to an aesthetic eye.
The incongruous pictures were there and the oddly assorted books,
but the new geraniums had a chance for life in the broader windows;
the cook stove was in the rear and there was a venerable Chinaman
in charge of it; the bedroom was kept so neat and clean that Droom
quite feared to upset it with his person. But, most strange of all,
was the change in Droom himself.

"I've retired from active work," he informed Graydon one day, when
that young man stared in astonishment at him. "What's the use, my