s so familiar a part of the daily routine that I was not
much surprised when my acquaintance, the astute poker player with the
scar, walked in upon us at the Auditorium. But Roebuck was both
astonished and chagrined when we shook hands and greeted each other like
old friends.

"How do you do, Mr. Sayler?" said Woodruff.

"Glad to see you, Doctor Woodruff," I replied. "Then you knew me all the
time? Why didn't you speak out? We might have had an hour's business
talk in the train."

"If I'd shown myself as leaky as all that, I guess there'd have been no
business to talk about," he replied. "Anyhow, I didn't know you till you
took out your watch with the monogram on the back, just as we were
pulling in. Then I remembered where I'd seen your face before. I was up
at your state house the day that you threw old Dominick down. That's
been a good many years ago."

That chance, easy, smoking-compartment meeting, at which each had
studied the other dispassionately, was most fortunate for us both.

The relation that was to exist between us--more, much more, than that of
mere employer and employe--made fidelity, personal fidelity, imperative;
and accident had laid the foundation for the mutual attachment without
which there is certain to be, sooner or later, suspicion on both sides,
and cause for it.

The two hours and a half with Woodruff, at and after dinner, served to
reinforce my first impression. I saw that he was a thorough man of the
world, that he knew politics from end to end, and that he understood the
main weaknesses of human nature and how to play upon them for the
advantage of his employers and for his own huge amusement. He gave a
small exhibition of that skill at the expense of Roebuck. He appreciated
that Roebuck was one of those unconscious hypocrites who put conscience
out of court in advance by assuming that whatever they wish to do is
right or _they_ could not wish to do it. He led Roebuck on to show off
this peculiarity of his,--a jumbling, often in the same breath, of the
most sonorous piety and the most shameless business perfidy. All the
time Woodruff's face was perfectly grave,--there are some men who refuse
to waste any of their internal enjoyment in external show.

Before he left us I arranged to meet him the next morning for the
settlement of the details of his employment. When Roebuck and I were
alone, I said: "What do you know about him? Who is he?"

"He comes of a good family here in Chicago,