“Most extraordinary—­most extraordinary!” mused the Honorable Archer Converse, when he was alone.  “From that meeting—­to an investigation—­from Dodd—­to this young man—­I have been leaping from crag to crag like a mountain-goat, never stopping to take breath.  And here I haven’t even been able to find out just who he is—­and they do say I’m the best cross-examiner in this state!  However, I’ll show Symonds Dodd that I’m not to be sneered at, even if I have to hire Patagonians in this campaign.”

Even chivalry must needs be spiced with a little strictly personal animosity to achieve its best results!

Colonel Symonds Dodd, laboriously climbing into his limousine in front of the First National block, scowled at a young man because the man grinned at him so broadly as he passed along.  In his general indifference and contempt for the humble the colonel did not search his memory and did not recognize this person as the young man who had appealed to him in his office.  The face seemed familiar and had some sort of an unpleasant recollection connected with it; therefore the colonel scowled.  He was far from realizing that this person carried on his palm the warmth from a hand-clasp which, just a moment before, had ratified an agreement to dynamite the Dodd political throne.

If some seer had risen beside his chariot to predict disaster the colonel would have shriveled him with a contemptuous look.  For the Consolidated Water Company had that day been intrenched more firmly than ever in its autocracy by a decision handed down from the Supreme Court.  A city had hired the best of lawyers and had fought desperately for the right to have pure water.  But the law, as expounded by the judges, had held as inexorable the provision that no city or town in the state could extend its debt limit above the legal five percent of its valuation, no matter for what purpose.  The city sought for some avenue, some plan, some evasion, even, so that it might take over the water system and give its people crystal water from the lakes instead of the polluted river-water.  The city pointed to typhoid cases, to slothful torpor on the part of the water syndicate.  But the court could only, in the last analysis, point to the law—­and that law in regard to debt limit was rooted in the constitution of the state—­and a law fortified by the constitution is seldom dislodged.

Backed by law, bulwarked by political power, owning men and money-bags, Colonel Dodd rode home with great serenity.  He had even forgotten his rather tempestuous half-hour with the Honorable Archer Converse.  As a matter of fact, gentlemen of the aristocracy of the state who prided themselves on their ancestry were considered by Colonel Dodd to be impracticable cranks; he despised the poor and hated the proud—­and called himself a self-made man.  And Colonel Dodd was firmly convinced that nobody could unmake him.

He strolled among his flower-beds that evening.