ry thoroughly, Leonard," Ralph
commented. "I'm afraid you only picked out the part of it that
compliments you. This fellow seems to have been struck by Krebs, says
he's a coming man, that he's making original contributions to the
people's cause. Quite a tribute. You ought to read it."

Dickinson, who had finished his lunch, got up and left the table after
lighting his cigar. Ralph's look followed him amusedly.

"I'm afraid it's time to cash in and be good," he observed.

"We'll get that fellow Krebs yet," said Grierson, wrathfully. Miller
Gorse alone made no remarks, but in spite of his silence he emanated an
animosity against reform and reformers that seemed to charge the very
atmosphere, and would have repressed any man but Ralph....

I sat in my room at the Club that night and reread the article, and if
its author could have looked into my soul and observed the emotions he
had set up, he would, no doubt, have experienced a grim satisfaction.
For I, too, had come in for a share of the comment. Portions of the
matter referring to me stuck in my brain like tar, such as the reference
to my father, to the honoured traditions of the Parets and the Brecks
which I had deliberately repudiated. I had less excuse than many others.
The part I had played in various reprehensible transactions such as the
Riverside Franchise and the dummy telephone company affair was dwelt
upon, and I was dismissed with the laconic comment that I was a graduate
of Harvard....

My associates and myself were referred to collectively as a "gang," with
the name of our city prefixed; we were linked up with and compared to
the gangs of other cities--the terminology used to describe us being
that of the police reporter. We "operated," like burglars; we "looted":
only, it was intimated in one place, "second-story men" were angels
compared to us, who had never seen the inside of a penitentiary. Here
we were, all arraigned before the bar of public opinion, the relentless
Dickinson, the surfeited Scherer, the rapacious Grierson, the salacious
Tallant. I have forgotten what Miller Gorse was called; nothing so
classic as a Minotaur; Judd Jason was a hairy spider who spread his net
and lurked in darkness for his victims. Every adjective was called upon
to do its duty.... Even Theodore Watling did not escape, but it was
intimated that he would be dealt with in another connection in a future
number.

The article had a crude and terrifying power, and the pain