"He has nothing to surrender. Zabulon had a bill-of-sale
on his furniture."
"Furniture!" cried the infuriated victim; "I don't want his furniture. I
want his flesh and bones. I want to shut him up in Dartmoor Prison, or to
get him twenty years' hard labour at Portland Island."
"That sort of man would get a ticket-of-leave in less than twelve
months," replied the philosophic friend. "I'm afraid you are only
throwing good money after bad."
The event proved this gentleman but too able a seer. In the monster city
of New York Philip Sheldon had disappeared like a single drop of water
flung upon the Atlantic Ocean. There was no trace of him: too intangible
for the grasp of international law, he melted into the mass of humanity,
only one struggler the more in the great army perpetually fighting life's
desperate battle.
From among all those who had known him this man had utterly vanished,
and not one sigh of regret followed him in his unknown wanderings--not
one creature amongst all those who had taken his hand and given him
friendly greeting thought of him kindly, or cared to know whither he
went or how he prospered. He had not left in the house that had
sheltered him for years so much as a dog to whine at his door or listen
for his returning footstep.
This fact, if he had known it or considered it, would have troubled him
very little. He had played his game for a certain stake, and had lost it.
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