The Valiants of Virginia

e held dropped to the claret-colored rug like a huge wh

the face was glazed in a kind of horrified and assiduous surprise, as if the rosy peach of life, bitten, had suddenly revealed itself an unripe persimmon. The very words themselves came with a galvanic twitch and a stagger that conveyed a sense at once of shock and of protest. Even the white bulldog stretched on th

ands. And a single curt statement-like the ruthless blades of a pair of shears-had snipped across the one splendid scarlet thread in the woof that constituted life as he knew it. He had knotted his lavender scarf that morning a

smell of growing things-for the great building fronted the square-and the soft alluring moistness of early spring. "Failed!" he r

ed up the Panama in his mouth, and padding across the rug, poked it tentatively into his master's hand. But no, the hand made no response. Clearly t

he elder Valiant had founded and controlled until his death. With almost unprecedented earnings, it had stood as a very Gibraltar of finance, a type and sign of brilliant organization. Now, o

was one of the local managers of the Corporation whose ruin was to be that day's sensation, a colorless man who had acquired middle age with his first long trousers and had been

at the desk shrank a little, as the hair rippled up on the thick neck and the faithful red-rimmed eye

him. The fleeting sense of power, the intimate touching of wide issues in a city of Big Things had flattered him; for a while he had dreamed of playing a great part, of pushing the activities of the Corporation into new territory, invading foreign soil. He might have done much, for he had begun with good equipment. He had read law, had even be

of his own uselessness. In those profitless seasons through which he had sauntered, as he had strolled through his casual years of college, he had given least of his time and thought to the concern which had absorbed his father's young man

tamped itself on everything as though a thousand little devils had suddenly t

e, too, had come to the window and was looking dow

d gesticulations-a smudged plasterer, tools in hand,-clerks, some hatless and with thin alpaca coats-all peering at the voiceless front of the great building, a

said the manager. "I sent word to th

ready to clamor for money entrusted to it, the aggregate savings of widow and orphan, the pit

t of the bonds of the subsidiary companies recorded in your name. These are all, of course, engulfed in the larger failure. You ha

?" John Valiant f

wise,'" he quoted. "It's very good living

into the younger

for this furniture? Do you know what that rug under your feet cost? Twelve thousand-it's an old Persian. What do you suppose the papers will do to that? Do you think such things will seem amusing to that rabble

o what you seem to believe has been a deliberate wrecking?" Valiant

. How many board meetings have you attended this year? Your vote is proxied as regular as clockwork. But you're supposed to know. The people down there in the street won't ask questions about patent-leathe

a blank white f

t, if you're not too damn honest.' He owns the Stony-Rive

ons to which in all his self-indulgent life he had been a stranger were running through his mind, and outré passions had him by the throat. Fool and doubly blind! A poor pawn, a catspaw raking the chestnuts for unscrupulous men whose igno

ctric forces in the air-but the door closed sharply in his face. He smiled grimly. "Not crooked," he said to himself; "merely callow. A w

enger had his nose buried in a newspaper, and over the reader's shoulder

t-up power. There were those in the sullen anxious crowd who knew whose was that throbbing metal miracle, the chauffeur spick and span from shining cap-visor to polished brown puttees, and recogn

baton up, brought him to himself with a thud. He had small mind to be stopped at the moment. His mouth set in a sudden hard sharp line, and under it his hands gripped the slewing wheel to a tearing serpentine rush that sent the

he particular chop-house of which he was an habitué-the ivied wall of his favorite club, with the cluster of faces at the double window-the florist's where daily he stopped for his knot of Parma violets-but he saw

parted slowly; the confidential secretary of the m

o see Mr.

see him, Mr

n leaped into the young vo

won't speak to anybody any more," he said