y neighbors. When you get
down to bed-rock honesty, I've never seen it in business. We're all of
us as honest as we think we can afford to be. I haven't noticed that
there is any premium on it in Mesa. Might makes right. I'll win if I'm
strong enough; I'll fail if I'm not. That's the law of life. I didn't
make this strenuous little world, and I'm not responsible for it. If I
play I have to take the rules the way they are, not the way I should
like them to be. I'm not squeamish, and I'm not a hypocrite. Simon
Harley isn't squeamish, either, but he happens to be a hypocrite. So
there you have the difference between us."

The president of the Mesa Ore-producing Company set forth his creed
jauntily, without the least consciousness of need for apology for the
fact that it happened to be divorced from morality. Its frank disregard
of ethical considerations startled Miss Balfour without shocking her.
She liked his candor, even though it condemned him. It was really very
nice of him to take her impudence so well. He certainly wasn't a prig,
anyway.

"And morality," she suggested tentatively.

"--hasn't a thing to do with success, the parsons to the contrary
notwithstanding. The battle is to the strong."

"Then the Consolidated will beat you finally."

He smiled. "They would if I'd let them; but brains and resource and
finesse all count for power. Granted that they have a hundred dollars
to my one. Still, I have elements of strength they can't even estimate.
David beat Goliath, you know, even though he didn't do it with a big
stick."

"So you think morality is for old women?"

"And young women," he amended, smiling.

"And every man is to be a law unto himself?"

"Not quite. Some men aren't big enough to be. Let them stick to the
conventional code. For me, if I make my own laws I don't break them."

"And you're sure that you're on the road to true success?" she asked
lightly.

"Now, you have heaven in the back of your mind."

"Not exactly," she laughed. "But I didn't expect you to understand."

"Then I won't disappoint you," he said cheerfully.

She came back to the concrete.

"I should like to know whether it is true that you own the courts of
Yuba County and have the decisions of the judges written at your
lawyer's offices in cases between you and the Consolidated."

"If I do," he answered easily, "I am doing just what the Consolidated
would do in case they had been so fortunate as to have won the last
elec