avalierly affronted by a man who, but a few short
years before, he would have considered a mere underling. Here was
Cowperwood bearding the lion in his den, dictating terms to the
principal financial figures of the city, standing up trig and resolute,
smiling in their faces and telling them in so many words to go to the
devil. Mr. Arneel glowered under lowering brows, but what could he do?
"We must see," he said to the others, "what time will bring. Just now
there is nothing much to do. This crisis has been too sudden. You say
you are not through with him, Hosmer, and neither am I. But we must
wait. We shall have to break him politically in this city, and I am
confident that in the end we can do it." The others were grateful for
his courage even though to-morrow he and they must part with millions
to protect themselves and the banks. For the first time Merrill
concluded that he would have to fight Cowperwood openly from now on,
though even yet he admired his courage. "But he is too defiant, too
cavalier! A very lion of a man," he said to himself. "A man with the
heart of a Numidian lion."

It was true.

From this day on for a little while, and because there was no immediate
political contest in sight, there was comparative peace in Chicago,
although it more resembled an armed camp operating under the terms of
some agreed neutrality than it did anything else. Schryhart, Hand,
Arneel, and Merrill were quietly watchful. Cowperwood's chief concern
was lest his enemies might succeed in their project of worsting him
politically in one or all three of the succeeding elections which were
due to occur every two years between now and 1903, at which time his
franchises would have to be renewed. As in the past they had made it
necessary for him to work against them through bribery and perjury, so
in ensuing struggles they might render it more and more difficult for
him or his agents to suborn the men elected to office. The subservient
and venal councilmen whom he now controlled might be replaced by men
who, if no more honest, would be more loyal to the enemy, thus blocking
the extension of his franchises. Yet upon a renewal period of at least
twenty and preferably fifty years depended the fulfilment of all the
colossal things he had begun--his art-collection, his new mansion, his
growing prestige as a financier, his rehabilitation socially, and the
celebration of his triumph by a union, morganatic or otherwise, with
s