matter. He will tell us when he comes."

The hands of the large clock in the outer room pointed to three.
An active, dapper little man with glasses and with books under his
arm passed hurriedly from another office into the directors room.

"There goes Mr. Lane with the minutes. The meeting is called.
Where's Mr. Ryder?"

There was a general move of the scattered groups of directors
toward the committee room. The clock overhead began to strike. The
last stroke had not quite died away when the big swinging doors
from the street were thrown open and there entered a tall, thin
man, gray-headed, and with a slight stoop, but keen eyed and
alert. He was carefully dressed in a well-fitting frock coat,
white waistcoat, black tie and silk hat.

It was John Burkett Ryder, the Colossus.

CHAPTER II

At fifty-six, John Burkett Ryder was surprisingly well preserved.
With the exception of the slight stoop, already noted, and the
rapidly thinning snow-white hair, his step was as light and
elastic, and his brain as vigorous and alert, as in a man of
forty. Of old English stock, his physical make-up presented
all those strongly marked characteristics of our race which,
sprung from Anglo-Saxon ancestry, but modified by nearly 300
years of different climate and customs, has gradually produced
the distinct and true American type, as easily recognizable among
the family of nations as any other of the earth's children. Tall
and distinguished-looking, Ryder would have attracted attention
anywhere. Men who have accomplished much in life usually bear
plainly upon their persons the indefinable stamp of achievement,
whether of good or evil, which renders them conspicuous among
their fellows. We turn after a man in the street and ask, Who is
he? And nine times out of ten the object of our curiosity is a man
who has made his mark--a successful soldier, a famous sailor, a
celebrated author, a distinguished lawyer, or even a notorious
crook.

There was certainly nothing in John Ryder's outward appearance to
justify Lombroso's sensational description of him: "A social and
physiological freak, a degenerate and a prodigy of turpitude who,
in the pursuit of money, crushes with the insensibility of a steel
machine everyone who stands in his way." On the contrary, Ryder,
outwardly at least, was a prepossessing-looking man. His head was
well-shaped, and he had an intellectual brow, while power was
expressed in every gesture of his hands and