ded in the
legislature the notorious Bill No. 709. It was well known in certain
circles--the editorial went on to say--that this legislation had been
drawn by Theodore Watling in the interests of the Boyne Iron Works,
etc., etc. Hugh Paret had learned at the feet of an able master. This
first sight of my name thus opprobriously flung to the multitude gave
me an unpleasant shock. I had seen Mr. Scherer attacked, Mr. Gorse
attacked, and Mr. Watling: I had all along realized, vaguely, that my
turn would come, and I thought myself to have acquired a compensating
philosophy. I threw the sheet into the waste basket, presently picked it
out again and reread the sentence containing my name. Well, there were
certain penalties that every career must pay. I had become, at last,
a marked man, and I recognized the fact that this assault would be the
forerunner of many.

I tried to derive some comfort and amusement from the thought of certain
operations of mine that Mr. Lawler had not discovered, that would
have been matters of peculiar interest to his innocent public: certain
extra-legal operations at the time when the Bovine corporation was being
formed, for instance. And how they would have licked their chops had
they learned of that manoeuvre by which I had managed to have one of
Mr. Scherer's subsidiary companies in another state, with property and
assets amounting to more than twenty millions, reorganized under the
laws of New Jersey, and the pending case thus transferred to the Federal
court, where we won hands down! This Galligan affair was nothing to
that. Nevertheless, it was annoying. As I sat in the street car on
my way homeward, a man beside me was reading the Pilot. I had a queer
sensation as he turned the page, and scanned the editorial; and I could
not help wondering what he and the thousands like him thought of me;
what he would say if I introduced myself and asked his opinion. Perhaps
he did not think at all: undoubtedly he, and the public at large, were
used to Mr. Lawler's daily display of "injustices." Nevertheless, like
slow acid, they must be eating into the public consciousness. It was an
outrage--this freedom of the press.

With renewed exasperation I thought of Krebs, of his disturbing and
almost uncanny faculty of following me up. Why couldn't he have remained
in Elkington? Why did he have to follow me here, to make capital out
of a case that might never have been heard of except for him?... I was
still i