en swept across the paper he
reflected on the deceitfulness of Senator Hanway, who, with the report
written out in full, was for having him think that the committee would
not conclude its labors for weeks.

"What a mendacious ingrate it is!" thought Richard.

Mr. Bayard had taken the ten-o'clock limited for New York that identical
morning. Richard caught a train a trifle after one, wiring Mr. Bayard to
meet him at the hotel. They would have dinner together. To make sure of
Mr. Bayard, Richard's message read:

"I have that report. You were right."

Mr. Bayard pored over the Hanway findings, and the further he read the
more his satisfaction stood on tiptoe. Conceive a gallery hung round
with paintings that would baffle a Rubens and set a Murillo to biting
the nail of envy! Have an orchestra polished to the last touch of
execution, discoursing the divinest work of some highest priest of
music. Sentinel the scene with marbles that would have doubled the fame
of a Praxiteles. Now, with your stage set, invite to its sumptuous midst
some amateur of all the arts whose senses were born for the beautiful.
Do what you will to endow your artist with contentment in perfection.
Fill his pockets with gold, give him wine of his fancy, have the woman
he loves by his side, so surround him that the eye, the ear, the
stomach, the heart, the pocket, or whatever is the soul of his soul may
be appealed to and enthralled--this artist, with whom love is a
religion, wine a cult, music a passion, and pictures are as dreams! When
you have him thus fortunately established, this artist of yours--for you
are not to forget he is none of mine--peruse his face. You should find
it expressing ecstasy in sublimation--you should discover it wearing the
twin to that look which mounted the brow of Mr. Bayard as he devoured
the Hanway report.

"Beautiful!" he whispered when he had finished.

Then he fell silent, prisoner to himself, walled in with his own
thoughts. A moment passed and the clouds rolled away; the delight faded,
and this artist among gamblers for whom speculation possessed harmony
and color and form, and whose life had been an Odyssey of Stocks,
recovered the practical.

"It is as I surmised," he said, with a sigh of content. "They will fall
upon Northern Consolidated bear-fashion--all claw and tooth. This report
finds the road to be a thief for millions; and a debtor for millions
upon that. The Attorney General must collect. The road mu