“Just a moment,” answered the girl, rising and entering the private office.  She returned at once.  “Mr. McQuade will see you.”

Warrington walked quietly into the lion’s den.

“Glad to see you, Mr. Warrington,” said McQuade, pointing toward a chair.  He did not offer his hand; something told him not to make that mistake.

From under the desk McQuade’s dog emerged, stiff and bristling.  On his side, Jove stood squarely on his legs, head on, as they say, his lips writhing and quivering with rage.  Warrington touched the chair that had been offered him.  Jove begged.  But the master was obdurate.  Jove jumped up, but turned quickly.  The white dog stopped.  He recognized that he was at a complete disadvantage.

McQuade watched these proceedings with an amused twinkle.  It was a clever manoeuver.  So far as he was concerned, a good dog fight would not have been to his distaste.

“It doesn’t hurt the brutes to light once in a while.  But, of course,” he added, “your dog is old.”

“Nothing is old till it is useless.”

“An epigram from one of your plays?”

“No; but it sounds good enough to use.  Jove has strong teeth, however, and he comes from a fighting family.  But for my part, I had much rather see two men pummel each other.”

“So would I, for that matter.”  McQuade pushed the match-box toward Warrington, but Warrington drew out his own and struck a light.  McQuade shrugged.

“Mr. McQuade, I am interested to learn what is back of your note.  Horses?”

“No; not horses.”

McQuade viewed the young man through half-closed eyes.  The contractor was a big hulk of a man, physically as strong as a bull, with reddish hair, small twinkling eyes, a puffy nose mottled with veins, thin lips shaded by a bristling red mustache, and a heavy jaw.  The red fell of hair on his hands reminded Warrington of a sow’s back.  Everything about McQuade suggested strength and tensity of purpose.  He had begun work on a canal-boat.  He had carried shovel and pick.  From boss on a railway section job he had become a brakeman.  He took a turn at lumbering, bought a tract of chestnuts and made a good penny in railroad ties.  He saved every dollar above his expenses.  He bought a small interest in a contracting firm, and presently he became its head.  There was ebb and tide to his fortunes but he hung on.  A lighting contract made him a rich man.  Then he drifted into politics; and now, at the age of fifty, he was a power in the state.  The one phase of sentiment in the man was the longing to possess all those obstacles that had beset his path in the days of his struggles.  He bought the canal-boat and converted it into a house-boat; he broke the man who had refused him a job at the start; he bought the block, the sidewalk of which he had swept; every man who stood in his way he removed this way or that.  He was dishonest, but his dishonesty was of a Napoleonic order.  He was uneducated,