Mr. Sayler," said
he, so moved that the tears stood in his eyes.

Then it flashed on me that, after all, he was only a big brute, driven
blindly by his appetites. How silly to plot revenges upon the creatures
of circumstance--how like a child beating the chair it happens to
strike against! Hatreds and revenges are for the small mind with small
matters to occupy it. Of the stones I have quarried to build my career,
not one has been, or could have been, spared to waste as a missile.

I went down to the Cedar Grove cemetery, where my mother lay beside my
father. My two sisters who died before I was born were at their feet;
her parents and his on either side. And I said to her, "Mother, I am
going to climb up to a place where I can use my life as you would have
me use it. To rise in such a world as this I shall have to do many
things you would not approve. I shall do them. But when I reach the
height, I shall justify myself and you. I know how many have started
with the same pledge and have been so defiled by what they had to handle
that when they arrived they were past cleansing; and they neither kept
nor cared to keep their pledge. But I, mother, shall not break this
pledge to you."

VIII

A CALL FROM "THE PARTY"

About a month after the Chicago and Fredonia bill was smothered in
committee there appeared upon the threshold of my office, in the
administration building of the Ramsay Company, a man whom at first
glance you might have taken for an exhorter or a collector for some
pious enterprise. But if you had made a study of faces, your second
glance would have cut through that gloze of oily, apologetic appeal.
Behind a thin screen of short gray beard lay a heavy loose mouth, cruel
and strong; above it, a great beak and a pair of pale green eyes,
intensely alive. They were in startling contrast to the apparent
decrepitude of the stooped shambling body, far too small for its
covering of decent but somewhat rusty black.

"Senator Dunkirk," said I, rising and advancing to greet the justly
feared leader of my party. I knew there was an intimate connection
between this visit and the death of his pet project. I thought it safe
to assume that he had somehow stumbled upon Woodruff's tunnelings, and
with that well-trained nose of his had smelled out their origin. But I
need not have disquieted myself; I did not then know how softly Woodruff
moved, sending no warnings ahead, and leaving no trail behind.

For severa