y growth, Hilary Vane had
achieved his present eminent position in the State. He was trustee for I
know not how many people and institutions, a deacon in the first
church, a lawyer of such ability that he sometimes was accorded
the courtesy-title of "Judge." His only vice--if it could be called
such--was in occasionally placing a piece, the size of a pea, of a
particular kind of plug tobacco under his tongue,--and this was not
known to many people. Euphrasia could not be called a wasteful person,
and Hilary had accumulated no small portion of this world's goods, and
placed them as propriety demanded, where they were not visible to the
naked eye: and be it added in his favour that he gave as secretly, to
institutions and hospitals the finances and methods of which were known
to him.

As concrete evidence of the Honourable Hilary Vane's importance, when
he travelled he had only to withdraw from his hip-pocket a book in which
many coloured cards were neatly inserted, an open-sesame which permitted
him to sit without payment even in those wheeled palaces of luxury known
as Pullman cars. Within the limits of the State he did not even have
to open the book, but merely say, with a twinkle of his eyes to the
conductor, "Good morning, John," and John would reply with a bow and a
genial and usually witty remark, and point him out to a nobody who sat
in the back of the car. So far had Mr. Hilary Vane's talents carried
him.

The beginning of this eminence dated back to the days before the Empire,
when there were many little principalities of railroads fighting among
themselves. For we are come to a changed America. There was a time, in
the days of the sixth Edward of England, when the great landowners found
it more profitable to consolidate the farms, seize the common lands, and
acquire riches hitherto undreamed of. Hence the rising of tailor Ket and
others, and the leveling of fences and barriers, and the eating of many
sheep. It may have been that Mr. Vane had come across this passage in
English history, but he drew no parallels. His first position of trust
had been as counsel for that principality known in the old days as the
Central Railroad, of which a certain Mr. Duncan had been president, and
Hilary Vane had fought the Central's battles with such telling
effect that when it was merged into the one Imperial Railroad, its
stockholders--to the admiration of financiers--were guaranteed ten per
cent. It was, indeed, rumoured th