e pronunciamento, "Above me
there shall be no one," lingered and the smile which hovered on the lips
held a certain grimness in its curve. It was not a reassuring smile for
such interests as ran counter to his own. A passing reporter who fancied
himself wise in the lore of the Street, halted to observe, and muttered
to himself, "Ursus Major wearing his fighting face! This may prove a day
worth watching."

A floor representative of a brokerage office caught the expression, too,
and into his memory came flooding the events of another day when this
same man, wearing the same smile, hurled himself upon the
Stock-Exchange, in a bear raid which had cost bull millions.

"The Great Bear, damn him!" he exclaimed with savage vehemence. "The
buccaneer's got some fresh piracy on foot if I know that sardonic grin."
Within the half-hour a mysteriously fathered rumor passed from mouth to
mouth on the floor of the Exchange, that Hamilton Burton was drawing
his battle-lines and that somewhere his bolt would fall. Because the
report was untraceable it was the more disquieting, and the
Stock-Exchange is ever ready to rock to an alarm. Yet just now, the man
whose silent smile could give birth to such sweeping potentialities did
nothing more significant than gaze absently at the tide of life which
eddied through Broadway's canon and at the disintegrating tombstones
which spoke of death in the shadow of Trinity.

There was something of tawny and tigerish splendor about this young man
who had sprung with mushroom swiftness from nowhere into the fierce
eminence of a financial conqueror. The supple grace of his movements
attested ready power. The immaculate elegance of his apparel challenged
notice by a flawlessness which went beyond the art of the tailor who
clothed him and assumed a distinction as though it had been the belted
uniform of a field marshal. Though pronounced the best-dressed man in
New York, he escaped all seeming of foppishness. Each small detail, from
the flower in his lapel to his gloves and shoes, seemed a significant
touch.

Hamilton Burton lent qualities from himself to everything that marked
him--and these qualities seemed to go like heralds at his front,
proclaiming, "This man is led by a star--his head overlooks the crowd!"

Men and women staring out from a sight-seeing car turned their heads
with a common accord, their attention arrested by something intangible.

Then as the megaphone operator lowered his voice i