ver than before the suits were brought.
But one thing was indelibly impressed upon his mind--that his bonds had
disappeared in the whirl and he had not received anything for them. I
think this suit is still pending.

CHAPTER XXVIII

PEACE AT LAST

When the curtain fell on the closing scene of the performance in the
Delaware court there ensued a brief interval of quiet in the affairs of
Bay State Gas. Rejoicing in the temporary diversion of public attention,
the chief actors proceeded to assume their former roles, and soon
affairs began to move at their old gait. Rogers took possession of all
the Boston gas companies and patiently awaited the coming down the pike
of some traveller with more money than brains. Having successfully
corrupted the State of Delaware, Addicks was being measured for the
senatorial toga, when accidentally the blind lady dropped her scales on
his unprotected head, which catastrophe laid him out long enough to
enable another to sneak the prize he had so long striven for. We are not
at present concerned with the affairs of Delaware, and it suffices to
say in passing, that after a heated contest one Richard Kenney was
chosen to the senatorial seat Addicks had so long coveted, and that this
man, a typical Delaware vote-rancher, after being sworn in as United
States Senator, was brought back to Wilmington and tried for robbing a
Delaware bank, his accomplices being some other heelers of Addicks. The
disclosures made in the trial showed that the case in all
characteristics conformed to the Addicks standard of indecency, for the
bank officials, not satisfied with "blowing in" every dollar of deposits
and capital the institution owned or controlled, had actually "lifted"
in addition the building in which the bank was situated. One of the
court functionaries who had heard the evidence tersely remarked: "Talk
about stealing a red-hot stove: this is a case where they took the
funnel with it to keep the draught going until they set it up in a new
location!"

But Delaware, as my readers have doubtless gathered long ere this, is
its own kind of a country, and rewards and punishments are so perversely
adjusted that it seems a sort of Topsyturvydom. In this instance certain
of Addicks' heelers went to State's prison and death; Kenney returned to
the Senate to help make laws for the great free people of America, while
the chief conspirator, with a threat to sue the blindfolded lady for
damage done, be