“You are going to have plenty of company, among your friends,” Macloud answered.
“I suppose so—but I hope none of them is hit quite so bad.” He blew another cloud of smoke and watched it fade. “The truth is, Colin, I’m done for.”
“What!” exclaimed Macloud. “You don’t mean you are cleaned out?”
The other nodded. “That’s about it.... I’ve a few thousand left—enough to pay laundry bills, and to board on Hash Alley for a few months a year. Oh! I was a sucker, all right!—I was so easy it makes me ashamed to have saved anything from the wreck. I’ve a notion to go and offer it to them, now.”
There were both bitterness and relief in his tones; 14 bitterness over the loss, relief that the worst, at last, had happened.
For a while, there was silence. Croyden turned away and began to dress; Macloud sat looking out on the lawn in front, where a foursome were playing the home hole, and another waiting until they got off the green.
Presently, the latter spoke.
“How did it happen, old man?” he asked—“that is, if you care to tell.”
Croyden laughed shortly. “It isn’t pleasant to relate how one has been such an addle-pated ass——”
“Then, forgive me.—I didn’t mean to——”