I found myself speculating as to who the “outsiders” might be.  No Ribblevale attorneys were on the spot as yet,—­of that I was satisfied.  In the absence of these, who were the opposition?  It seemed to me as though I had interviewed that day every man in the legislature.

I was very tired.  But when I got into bed, it was impossible to sleep.  My eyes smarted from the tobacco smoke; and the events of the day, in disorderly manner, kept running through my head.  The tide of my exhilaration had ebbed, and I found myself struggling against a revulsion caused, apparently, by the contemplation of Colonel Varney and his associates; the instruments, in brief, by which our triumph over our opponents was to be effected.  And that same idea which, when launched amidst the surroundings of the Boyne Club, had seemed so brilliant, now took on an aspect of tawdriness.  Another thought intruded itself,—­that of Mr. Pugh, the president of the Ribblevale Company.  My father had known him, and some years before I had traveled halfway across the state in his company; his kindliness had impressed me.  He had spent a large part of his business life, I knew, in building up the Ribblevale, and now it was to be wrested from him; he was to be set aside, perhaps forced to start all over again when old age was coming on!  In vain I accused myself of sentimentality, and summoned all my arguments to prove that in commerce efficiency must be the only test.  The image of Mr. Pugh would not down.

I got up and turned on the light, and took refuge in a novel I had in my bag.  Presently I grew calmer.  I had chosen.  I had succeeded.  And now that I had my finger at last on the nerve of power, it was no time to weaken.

It was half-past six when I awoke and went to the window, relieved to find that the sun had scattered my morbid fancies with the darkness; and I speculated, as I dressed, whether the thing called conscience were not, after all, a matter of nerves.  I went downstairs through the tobacco-stale atmosphere of the lobby into the fresh air and sparkly sunlight of the mild February morning, and leaving the business district I reached the residence portion of the little town.  The front steps of some of the comfortable houses were being swept by industrious servant girls, and out of the chimneys twisted, fantastically, rich blue smoke; the bare branches of the trees were silver-grey against the sky; gaining at last an old-fashioned, wooden bridge, I stood for awhile gazing at the river, over the shallows of which the spendthrift hand of nature had flung a shower of diamonds.  And I reflected that the world was for the strong, for him who dared reach out his hand and take what it offered.  It was not money we coveted, we Americans, but power, the self-expression conferred by power.  A single experience such as I had had the night before would since to convince any sane man that democracy was a failure, that the world-old principle of aristocracy