It was when he was twenty-seven--not quite lost--that the news came from
Vienna of an unexpected legacy. His uncle, dying at the summit of a
successful career, had relented and left him fifty thousand dollars. He
assured himself he would be careful--poverty had taught him--and at first
he tried. But the habits of "the years that the locust had eaten" were
too strong. Augmented by several successful speculations it lasted him
for six years. At the end of that time he was ruined, worn in body,
warped in mind, his mold finally set.

After that he ceased to pick his way along the edges of the law, he
slipped over. He followed many lines of endeavor, knew the back waters
and hinterlands of many cities, ceased to be Lothar Heyderich and was
known by other names. It was in Chicago, the winter before this story
begins, that an attack of pneumonia brought him to the public ward of a
hospital. Before his discharge, a doctor--a man who had noticed and been
interested in him--gave him a word of warning:

"A warm climate--no more lake breezes for you. If you stay here and keep
on swinging round the circle it won't be long before you swing back here
to us--swing back to stay. Do you get me?"

He did, his face gone gray at this sudden vision of the end of all
things. The doctor, in pity for what he was now and evidently once had
been, gave him his fare to California.

It had been hell there. The climate had done its work, he was well, but
he had felt himself more a pariah than ever before. He had seemed like a
fly crawling over a glass shield under which tempting dainties are
clearly visible and maddeningly unattainable. A man wanted money in
California--with money could lead the life, half vagabondage, half lazy