longer a subordinate,
an employee. He was his own man, a proprietor, an owner of land,
furthering a successful enterprise. No one had helped him; he had
followed no one's lead. He had struck out unaided for himself, and his
success was due solely to his own intelligence, industry, and foresight.
He squared his great shoulders till the blue gingham of his jumper all
but cracked. Of late, his great blond beard had grown and the work in
the sun had made his face very red. Under the visor of his cap--relic of
his engineering days--his blue eyes twinkled with vast good-nature. He
felt that he made a fine figure as he went by a group of young girls in
lawns and muslins and garden hats on their way to the Post Office. He
wondered if they looked after him, wondered if they had heard that he
was in a fair way to become a rich man.

But the chronometer in the window of the jewelry store warned him that
time was passing. He turned about, and, crossing the street, took his
way to Ruggles's office, which was the freight as well as the land
office of the P. and S. W. Railroad.

As he stood for a moment at the counter in front of the wire partition,
waiting for the clerk to make out the order for the freight agent at the
depot, Dyke was surprised to see a familiar figure in conference with
Ruggles himself, by a desk inside the railing.

The figure was that of a middle-aged man, fat, with a great stomach,
which he stroked from time to time. As he turned about, addressing a
remark to the clerk, Dyke recognised S. Behrman. The banker, railroad
agent, and political manipulator seemed to the ex-engineer's eyes to be
more gross than ever. His smooth-shaven jowl stood out big and tremulous
on either side of his face; the roll of fat on the nape of his neck,
sprinkled with sparse, stiff hairs, bulged out with greater prominence.
His great stomach, covered with a light brown linen vest, stamped with
innumerable interlocked horseshoes, protruded far in advance, enormous,
aggressive. He wore his inevitable round-topped hat of stiff brown
straw, varnished so bright that it reflected the light of the office
windows like a helmet, and even from where he stood Dyke could hear his
loud breathing and the clink of the hollow links of his watch chain upon
the vest buttons of imitation pearl, as his stomach rose and fell.

Dyke looked at him with attention. There was the enemy, the
representative of the Trust with which Derrick's League was locking