cease regretting it."

His smile was a mere indrawing of the lips.

"Having opened the door, you would try to shut it again, would you? How
like a woman! But I am afraid it can't be done. I had been trying to keep
away from that point of view.... There is much to be said on both sides.
There was a time when I wouldn't have gone into such a thing as this fight
with the junto; but being in, I should have seen it through regardless of
the public welfare--ignoring that side of it. I can't do it now; you have
shown me that I can't."

"But I don't want to be a stumbling-block," she insisted. "Won't you
believe that I wanted to help?"

"I believe that your motive was all it should be; yes. But the result is
the same."

Loring and Penelope were coming out, and the end of their privacy was at
hand.

"What will you do?" she asked.

"I don't know: nothing that I had meant to do. It was a false start and I
am back under the wire again."

"But you must not turn back unless you are fully convinced of the wrong of
going on," she protested.

"Didn't you mean to convince me?"

"No--yes--I don't know. I--it seems very clear to me; but I want it to
seem clear to you. Doesn't your conscience tell you that you ought to turn
back?"

"No," he said shortly; but he immediately qualified the denial. "You may
be right: I am afraid you are right. But I shall have to fight it out for
myself. There are many things to consider. If I hold my hand, these
bucaneers will triumph over the stockholders, and a host of innocent
people will suffer loss." Then, seeing the quick-springing tears in her
eyes: "But you mustn't be sorry for having done what you had to do; you
have nothing to reproach yourself for."

"Oh, but I have!" she said; and so they parted.

XXIII

THE INSURRECTIONARIES

When the Receiver Guilfords, great and small, set their official
guillotines at work lopping off department heads, they commonly ignore a
consequence overlooked by many; namely, the possible effect of such
wholesale changes in leadership upon the rank and file.

The American railroad in its unconsolidated stage is a modern feudalism.
Its suzerains are the president and board of directors; its clan chiefs
are the men who have built it and fought for its footing in the sharply
contested field of competition. To these leaders the rank and file is
loyal, as loyalty is accorded to the men who build and do, rather than to
their successors who inherit