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.

Walker Farr sat in his narrow chamber and pored over interlined
manuscripts. At last he shook the papers above his head, not gaily, but
with grim bitterness.

"That plan will stand law, and no other lawyer ever thought of it!"
he cried, aloud. "You've got an iron clutch on those cities and towns,
Colonel Dodd, but I've got something that will pry your fingers loose!"
He threw the papers from him and set his face in his hands. "And they
ask me who I am and I can't tell them," he sobbed.

XXIII

THE PROPHET WHO WAS UNDERRATED

The first sniffer to catch the trail of Walker Farr was the veteran,
Daniel Breed, an old political hound who always traveled with muffled
paws and nose close to