Symonds Dodd sat at his desk in the First National block and
clutched helplessly at the dragging ends of events. He failed to get
firm hold on anything and irefully informed Judge Warren that the whole
situation was a "damnation nightmare."

"Well," affirmed the judge, who had been pricked in his legal pride
by his master's tongue, "the Consolidated has eaten some pretty hearty
meals. It's no wonder it is having bad dreams right now."

"You're squatting down like an old rooster in a dust-heap," raged
the colonel, too angry to be choice in his language. "You, a
twenty-five-thousand-dollar lawyer, come in here to me and say that you
can't block the confiscatory scheme of a bounder--a nobody--a black-leg
stranger in this state!"

"I'll carry on the fight if you order me to do so," said the corporation
lawyer. "That's my business. We can lobby in the next legislature. We
can fight the laws that Archer Converse's legislature is bound to
pass, for they're after us, Colonel Dodd. We can carry the thing to
the highest tribunal--and then we can fight the appraisals on every
water-plant in the state, but--"

"Well, but what?"

"One by one they'll pry loose every finger we have got hooked on to our
proposition. I have submitted that water-district plan to the acid test,
Colonel. It was my duty to do it. A lawyer must keep cool while his
bosses curse and disparage. I have the opinions of the law departments
of three leading colleges on the scheme. They all say that such a
plan, if properly safeguarded by constitutional law, will get by every
blockade we can erect. Now if you want to spend money I'll help you
spend all you care to appropriate," concluded the judge, grimly.

"We'll fight," was the dictum of the master.

"Then I take it that you have definitely decided to give up your
political control, Colonel! A certain amount of popularity is needed to
cinch any man in politics. You're going to be the most unpopular man in
this state if you start in to fight every town and city simply for the
purpose of piling up costs and clubbing them away from their own as long
as you have the muscle to do it."

"I don't care about politics--politics has gone to the devil in this
state already. They'll get tired of chasing fox-fires through a swamp
following after such lah-de-dahs as Arch Converse, and will come back
and be good. I'll wait for 'em to come back. But in the mean time I'm
going to have the courts say whether our property