e general approval of the mining companies,
practically gave Kenneth Traynor control of the diamond industry of the
world, an industry which in South Africa alone had already produced
100,000,000 carats estimated to be worth $750,000,000. Overnight,
Kenneth found himself many times a millionaire.

It had come at last--what he waited for all these years. This new
consolidation deal meant great wealth to its promoters. What would he
do with it? Most men need only enough for their actual needs, but he
had higher aims. An ardent socialist he would use his money for the
cause. Not, however, in the way others did, but to buy influence,
power. He would fight Capitalism, in his own way. He would go into
politics, run for public office, try and remedy some of the economic
abuses from which people of the United States were now suffering. He
would wage warfare on the high cost of living, on Greed and Graft. He
would attack the Plutocracy in its stronghold, lay bare the inner
workings of the System, the concentration of the wealth of the entire
country in the hands of a few, by which the rich each year were
becoming richer and the poor each year poorer. It would not be the
first time a multi-millionaire had espoused the cause of the
proletariat, but he would carry on the fight more vigorously than
anyone had done. He would force an issue, make Greed disgorge its
ill-gotten gains and accord to Labor its rightful place in the sun, its
proper share of the world's production of wealth. His sympathies in
the bitter struggle between the capitalists and the wage earners were
wholly with the people who under the present wage system, had little
chance to raise themselves from the mire. But he was intelligent
enough to realize that the faults were not all on the side of Capital.
Labor, too, needed the curb at times. Too ready to listen to the
reckless harangues of irresponsible professional demagogues, wage
earners were often as tyrannical as capitalists, insisting on
impossible demands, rejecting sober compromise which, in the end, must
be the basis of all amicable relations between employer and employed.

For some time he sat there, giving free rein to his imagination, when
suddenly he fancied he heard the sound of heavy footsteps crunching on
the hard sand. Raising his head he looked quickly round but seeing no
one, concluded he was mistaken. Looking at his watch, he was amazed to
find that he had been away from camp a w