Suddenly he came to a decision and, calling Lewis, began laying out a plan of action. His head cleared and the ring came back into his voice. To Lewis he gave an option on his entire holdings of Edwards Consolidated stocks and bonds and to him also he entrusted the clearing up of deal after deal in which he was interested. Then, calling a broker, he began throwing a mass of stock on the market. When Lewis told him that Crofts was 'phoning wildly about town to find him, and was with the help of another banker supporting the market and taking Sam's stocks as fast as offered, he laughed and giving Lewis instructions regarding the disposal of his monies walked out of the office, again a free man and again seeking the answer to his problem.

He made no attempt to answer Sue's wire. He was restless to get at something he had in his mind. He went to his apartments and packed a bag and from there disappeared saying goodbye to no one. In his mind was no definite idea of where he was going or what he was going to do. He knew only that he would follow the message his hand had written. He would try to spend his life seeking truth.

BOOK III

CHAPTER I

One day when the youth Sam McPherson was new in the city he went on a Sunday afternoon to a down-town theatre to hear a sermon. The sermon was delivered by a small dark-skinned Boston man, and seemed to the young McPherson scholarly and well thought out.

"The greatest man is he whose deeds affect the greatest number of lives," the speaker had said, and the thought had stuck in Sam's mind. Now walking along the street carrying his travelling bag, he remembered the sermon and the thought and shook his head in doubt.

"What I have done here in this city must have affected thousands of lives," he mused, and felt a quickening of his blood at just letting go of his thoughts as he had not dared do since that day when, by breaking his word to Sue, he had started on his career as a business giant.

He began to think of the quest on which he had started and had keen satisfaction in the thought of what he should do.

"I will begin all over and come up to Truth through work," he told himself. "I will leave the money hunger behind me, and if it returns I will come back here to Chicago and see my fortune piled up and the men rushing about the banks and the stock exchange and the court they pay to such fools and brutes as I have been, and that will cure me."