cies of a
problem almost intuitively; his logic is profound. Years of study have
made his mind a storehouse of knowledge.

To Nevins, in the allotment of the proscribed, has fallen the head of
the money trust, a multi-millionaire banker, a financial Magnate known
throughout the civilized world as the most rapacious miser on record.
This man has repeatedly shown that he has no regard for honesty of
purpose, and his moral appreciation is imperceptible. To recount the
deeds of cunning, of fraud, of gigantic robbery that he has committed in
his relentless quest for wealth, would be to retell the story of wrecked
railroads, enormously profitable bond issues and Wall street panics of
the past decade. The obituaries of the hundreds he has ruined afford the
best method of arriving at a partial conception of his power for evil.

"What a privilege to rid the world of this genius of evil!" is Nevins's
inward comment as he reads the fatal slip and sees that upon him has
fallen the lot to execute the sentence of annihilation upon James
Golding, the King of Wall street.

CHAPTER XX.

IN THE ENEMY'S STRONGHOLD.

After an absence of weeks, during which time Harvey Trueman carries the
war into the very heart of the Magnates' strongholds, he returns to
Chicago. His first mission is to visit Sister Martha. She had been kept
in touch with his movements by short notes and aggravatingly brief
telegrams, which he sent her as occasion permitted. In the papers she
finds but meagre notice of the progress which the Independence party is
making, for the censor of the press has effectually silenced all the
important mediums. The News Associations, even, are brought under the
ban and are given to understand that a violation of the orders of the
Plutocratic Party will mean a forfeiture of all privileges of
transportation to papers using the offensive news.

The meeting of these two ardent patriots is fraught with emotion.
Trueman is the more moved by reason of the knowledge that he is regarded
by Martha as the embodiment of all virtue, wisdom and power. He feels
his incapacity to fill this exalted role, especially as the unrequited
love he bears for Ethel Purdy is still burning in his heart.

"You do not seem yourself to-night," Martha tells him frankly.

"No, that is true; I have so much to think about; so many details to
keep in mind that I suffer from abstraction when I am not under the
stress of actual labor."

Trueman is seate