man than he in its management;
some man of ideas more liberal than Farnsworth's, and of more age and
experience than this young Millard. His mind turned to Hilbrough, the
real-estate agent in Montague Street, Brooklyn. First a poor clerk, then
a small collector of tenement-house rents, then a prosperous real-estate
agent and operator on his own account, he had come by shrewd investment
to be a rich man. He was accustomed to make call loans to a large amount
on collateral security, and his business was even now almost that of a
private banker. A director in the Bank of Manhadoes from its beginning
and one of its largest stockholders, he was the most eligible man to
succeed Masters in the active management of its affairs, and the only
man whose election once proposed would certainly command the support of
the directors against the scheme of Farnsworth. He was the one possible
man who would prove quite too large for Farnsworth's domineering. It
was with a pang that Masters reflected that he too would be effaced in a
measure by the advent of a man so vital as Warren Hilbrough; but there
was for him only the choice between being effaced by Hilbrough's
superior personality and being officially put out of the way by
Farnsworth's process of slow torture. He saw, too, that a bank with four
high-grade officers would have a more stable official equilibrium than
one where the power is shared between two. The head of such an
institution is sheltered from adverse intrigues by the counterpoise of
the several officers to one another.

If Masters had needed any stimulus to his resolution to contravene the
ambitious plans of the cashier, Mrs. Masters would have supplied it.
When she heard of Farnsworth's scheme, she raised again her old cry of
_Carthago delenda est_, Farnsworth must be put out. In her opinion
nothing else would meet the requirement of poetic justice; but she
despaired of persuading Masters to a measure so extreme. It was always
the way. Mr. Masters was too meek for anything; he would let people run
over him.

But Masters had no notion of being run over. He went to the office every
day, and from the office he went to his country-place in New Jersey
every afternoon. There was nothing in his actions to excite the
suspicion of the cashier, who could not know that negotiations with
Hilbrough, and the private submission of the proposition to certain
directors, had all been intrusted to the tact of Charley Millard. It was
rat