uit, made, apparently, of alligator hide; and as he
sat there with a rifle across his knees, while the train swept onwards
through open fields and broken woods, the real country at last, towards
the Wisconsin forest, there was such a light of genial happiness in his
face that had not been seen there since he had been marooned in the mud
jungles of Upper Burmah.

And opposite, Mr. Boulder looked at him with fixed silent eyes, and
murmured from time to time some renewed information of the ferocity of
the timber-wolf.

But of wolves other than the timber-wolf, and fiercer still into whose
hands the Duke might fall in America, he spoke never a word.

Nor is it known in the record what happened in Wisconsin, and to the
Mausoleum Club the Duke and his visit remained only as a passing and a
pleasant memory.

CHAPTER TWO: The Wizard of Finance

Down in the City itself, just below the residential street where the
Mausoleum Club is situated, there stands overlooking Central Square the
Grand Palaver Hotel. It is, in truth, at no great distance from the
club, not half a minute in one's motor. In fact, one could almost walk
it.

But in Central Square the quiet of Plutoria Avenue is exchanged for
another atmosphere. There are fountains that splash unendingly and
mingle their music with the sound of the motor-horns and the clatter of
the cabs. There are real trees and little green benches, with people
reading yesterday's newspaper, and grass cut into plots among the
asphalt. There is at one end a statue of the first governor of the
state, life-size, cut in stone; and at the other a statue of the last,
ever so much larger than life, cast in bronze. And all the people who
pass by pause and look at this statue and point at it with
walking-sticks, because it is of extraordinary interest; in fact, it is
an example of the new electro-chemical process of casting by which you
can cast a state governor any size you like, no matter what you start
from. Those who know about such things explain what an interesting
contrast the two statues are; for in the case of the governor of a
hundred years ago one had to start from plain, rough material and work
patiently for years to get the effect, whereas now the material doesn't
matter at all, and with any sort of scrap, treated in the gas furnace
under tremendous pressure, one may make a figure of colossal size like
the one in Central Square.

So naturally Central Square with its trees and i