Page:The gold brick (1910).djvu/71

 "Oh, don't say that," cried McCray. "All but that last—all but that last."

"Why not that?"

"Because it's too late. Oh, Holman, it's too late—too late! If it were only yesterday! But now—it's too late!"

And McCray bent forward, bowed in pain, and wept.

Holman waited until the boy's grief subsided, and then, by degrees, he got the story. To McCray it was an irreclaimable and tragic wreck of life. But to Holman, in the broader vision his own sins had made possible, and in some of his judgments of men, perhaps too broad—if, indeed, that may be—the case was not at all hopeless. He had not, it is true, been prepared for a revelation so complete and damaging, but it presented to him no irrevocable aspect. McCray, with the proclivity of youth to fixed and fated facts, saw the thing consummated and complete, the contract wholly executed; but Holman did not regard it as even executory, and he cited for McCray the old adage about the bad bargain.

"We'll just give the stuff back to Baldwin."

"Before?"