rett's dead!" said Mr. Kyme.

The lawyer nodded.

"The old regime passed with him. Adolf Scherer succeeds him, and you may
take my word for it, he's a coming man. Mr. Durrett, who was a judge of
men, recognized that. Scherer was an emigrant, he had ideas, and rose to
be a foreman. For the last few years Mr. Durrett threw everything on his
shoulders...."

Little by little the scope of the discussion was enlarged until it
ranged over a continent, touching lightly upon lines of railroad, built
or projected, across the great west our pioneers had so lately succeeded
in wresting from the savages, upon mines of copper and gold hidden away
among the mountains, and millions of acres of forest and grazing
lands which a complacent government would relinquish provided certain
technicalities were met: touching lightly, too, very lightly,--upon
senators and congressmen at Washington. And for the first time I learned
that not the least of the functions of these representatives of the
people was to act as the medium between capital and investment, to
facilitate the handing over of the Republic's resources to those in
a position to develop them. The emphasis was laid on development,
or rather on the resulting prosperity for the country: that was the
justification, and it was taken for granted as supreme. Nor was it new
to me; this cult of prosperity. I recalled the torch-light processions
of the tariff enthusiasts of my childhood days, my father's championship
of the Republican Party. He had not idealized politicians, either. For
the American, politics and ethics were strangers.

Thus I listened with increasing fascination to these gentlemen in
evening clothes calmly treating the United States as a melon patch that
existed largely for the purpose of being divided up amongst a limited
and favored number of persons. I had a feeling of being among the
initiated. Where, it may be asked, were my ideals? Let it not be
supposed that I believed myself to have lost them. If so, the impression
I have given of myself has been wholly inadequate. No, they had been
transmuted, that is all, transmuted by the alchemy of Weathersfield,
by the personality of Theodore Watling into brighter visions. My eyes
rarely left his face; I hung on his talk, which was interspersed with
native humour, though he did not always join in the laughter, sometimes
gazing at the fire, as though his keen mind were grappling with a
problem suggested. I noted the respect i