he political
machine that controlled his native State of Mississippi, and of the
bipartisan combination that dominated both houses of Congress in the
interest of the great railway and industrial corporations. Senator
Stevens and other powers had so distorted Norton's view of the
difference between public and private interests and their respective
rights that he had come to believe captial to be the sacred heritage
of the nation which must be protected at any cost. The acceptance of
a retainer from the C. St. and P. Railroad Company for wholly
unnecessary services in Washington--only another way of buying a
man--a transaction arranged by Senator Stevens, was but another stage
in the disintegration of the young Congressman's character, but it
brought him just that much closer to the point where he could claim
Carolina Langdon as his own. And opportunity does not knock twice at a
man's door--unless he is at the head of the machine.

Norton, the persevering young law student who loved the girl who had
been his boyhood playmate, was now Norton who coveted her father's
lands, who boasted that he was on the "inside" in Washington, who was
on the way to fortune--if the new Senator from Mississippi would or
could be forced to stand in favor of the Altacoola naval base.

His conversation with Randolph Langdon, as Haines and Cullen saw them
pass through the hotel lobby, illustrated the nature of the Norton of
the present and his interest in the Altacoola scheme.

"There's no reason why you shouldn't come in on the ground floor in
this proposition, Randolph," he was urging in continuance of the
conversation begun over a table in the cafe. "No reason why you
shouldn't do it, my boy. Why, are you still a child, or are you really
a man? You have now drafts for $50,000, haven't you?"

"Yeah," agreed Langdon, chagrined at Norton's insinuation of
youthfulness and anxious to prove that he was really a man of affairs,
"I've got the fifty thousand, Charlie, but--but, you see, that's the
money for improvements on the plantation. As father has put me in as
manager I want to make a showing."

"You can't make it until spring," urged Norton. "The money's got to
lie in the bank all winter. Now, why don't you make a hundred thousand
with it instead of letting it lie idle? Isn't that simple?"

The younger man's eyes opened wide, and his imagination, stimulated by
the special brand of Bourbon whisky Norton had ordered for him, took
rapid boun