ed to do so, they are very likely to
forget their place. At the court of a boss are seen only those who have
lost self-respect and those who never had it. The first are the lower
though they rank themselves, and are ranked, above the "just naturally
low."

But--Dominick was alone, his eternal glass of sarsaparilla before him.
He used the left corner of his mouth both for his cigar and for speech.
To bid me draw near and seat myself, he had to shift his cigar. When the
few words necessary were half-spoken, half-grunted, he rolled his cigar
back to the corner which it rarely left. He nodded condescendingly, and,
as I took the indicated chair at his right, gave me a hand that was fat
and firm, not unlike the flabby yet tenacious sucker of a moist
sea-creature.

He was a huge, tall man, enormously muscular, with a high head like a
block, straight in front, behind and on either side; keen, shifty, pig
eyes, pompous cheeks, a raw, wide mouth; slovenly dress, with a big
diamond as a collar button and another on his puffy little finger. He
was about forty years old, had graduated from blacksmith too lazy to
work into prize-fighter, thence into saloon-keeper. It was as a
saloon-keeper that he founded and built his power, made himself the
local middleman between our two great political factors, those who buy
and break laws and those who aid and abet the lawlessness by selling
themselves as voters or as office-holders.

Dominick had fixed his eyes upon his sarsaparilla. He frowned savagely
into its pale brown foam when he realized that I purposed to force him
to speak first. His voice was ominously surly as he shifted his cigar to
say: "Well, young fellow, what can I do for you?"

"Mr. Fessenden told me you wanted to see me," said I.

"He didn't say nothing of the sort," growled Dominick. "I've knowed Buck
seventeen years, and he ain't no liar."

I flushed and glanced at the distinguished company silently waiting to
return to the royal presence. Surely, if these eminent fellow citizens
of mine endured this insulting monarch, I could,--I, the youthful, the
obscure, the despondent. Said I: "Perhaps I did not express myself quite
accurately. Fessenden told me you were considering making me your
candidate for county prosecutor, and suggested that I call and see
you."

[Illustration: HE SHIFTED HIS CIGAR TO SAY: "WELL, YOUNG FELLOW, WHAT
CAN I DO FOR YOU?" p. 20]

Dominick gave a gleam and a grunt like a hog that has been fla