duate--on my
visit to Jerry Kyme--was at last to be realized! I had now become the
indispensable associate of the few who divided the spoils, I was to have
a share in these myself.

"You're young, Paret," Mr. Scherer concluded. "But Watling has confidence
in you, and you will consult him frequently. I believe in the young men,
and I have already seen something of you--so?"...

When I returned to the office I wrote Theodore Watling a letter
expressing my gratitude for the position he had, so to speak, willed me,
of confidential legal adviser to Adolf Scherer. Though the opportunity
had thrust itself upon me suddenly, and sooner than I expected it, I was
determined to prove myself worthy of it. I worked as I had never worked
before, making trips to New York to consult leading members of this new
branch of my profession there, trips to Washington to see my former
chief. There were, too, numerous conferences with local personages, with
Mr. Dickinson and Mr. Grierson, and Judah B. Tallant,--whose newspaper
was most useful; there were consultations and negotiations of a delicate
nature with the owners and lawyers of other companies to be "taken in."
Nor was it all legal work, in the older and narrower sense. Men who are
playing for principalities are making war. Some of our operations had all
the excitement of war. There was information to be got, and it was
got--somehow. Modern war involves a spy system, and a friendly telephone
company is not to be despised. And all of this work from first to last
had to be done with extreme caution. Moribund distinctions of right and
wrong did not trouble me, for the modern man labours religiously when he
knows that Evolution is on his side.

For all of these operations a corps of counsel had been employed,
including the firm of Harrington and Bowes next to Theodore Watling, Joel
Harrington was deemed the ablest lawyer in the city. We organized in due
time the corporation known as the Boyne Iron Works, Limited; a trust
agreement was drawn up that was a masterpiece of its kind, one that
caused, first and last, meddling officials in the Department of Justice
at Washington no little trouble and perplexity. I was proud of the fact
that I had taken no small part in its composition.... In short, in
addition to certain emoluments and opportunities for investment, I
emerged from the affair firmly established in the good graces of Adolf
Scherer, and with a reputation practically made.

A year o