e purpose and with
no eye to merely his own convenience. His presence there was a
tangible power offering a final court of appeal that, whether they
knew it or not, had as great an effect on the various committees as it
had on the managers of each business themselves.

So perfect was the organisation and adjustment of the machinery of
routine that after the dominant visible power had gone down to the
land of shadows, the vague note of personal anxiety that lurked on
each floor was the only perceptible change apparent in the great
body.

But the wives of the working heads could have told of more enduring
change in men who have suddenly become responsible for great issues,
for laws, for a system they had had no voice in founding. Men who
found themselves limited masters where unconsciously they had been
tools and were selected as such--there men sooner or later bend
before the strain put on them and for the most part seek salvation in
blind obedience to the rules they dare not criticise. In the daily
compromise between the individual character and the system which he
must serve, many an excellent man was ground down in nerve and heart
and health to a strange shadow of his former self, and many a woman
shed secret tears over half-understood changes in one near and dear to
her.

Mr. Saunderson by right of informal instructions, which no one
troubled to dispute, acted as steward over the late Peter Masters'
private affairs during those two years of waiting, and his stewardship
was prosperous and able, but beyond that he neither would nor could
move. To the appeals of distracted secretaries he only replied, "My
dear sir, act to the best of your ability. I can only assure you your
responsibilities are limited to two years."

He never allowed to anyone the possibility that Peter Masters' son
might even then fail to accept his place, but alone to himself he
faced it often and felt his scanty hair whiten beneath the impending
wreckage, if the misguided young man continued his foolish course.

"He will probably wreck the whole thing if he accepts it," sighed Mr.
Saunderson, "but at least it will be done legally, and in the regular
course of things. If he'll only be sensible and see he's wanted just
as a figurehead, everyone will be comfortable and prosperous."

But he sighed again as he thought it, for Christopher did not at all
strike him as a man likely to make a good figurehead, or to be the
mouthpiece of a system he ev