d
unsuspecting as a child when it came to penetrating the real motives
of the conspirators. Vain, self-important, possessed of an abnormal
conceit, men of his type go ahead ruthlessly, ignoring the details, bent
only on achieving the ultimate. In Landover's case, he made the fatal
error of underestimating the craftiness of Manuel Crust; he looked upon
him as a blatant, ignorant ruffian of the stripe best known to him as
a "beer saloon politician,"--and known only by hearsay, at that. He
regarded himself as the master-politician and Crust as a contemptible
necessity.

As a matter of fact, Crust was using him to very materially advance his
own ends. The big Portuguese had a very definite purpose in mind. He had
no more intention of making Landover the chief man of the island than
he had of flying to the moon. He,--Manuel Crust,--was to have that
distinction! He despised Landover and all that he represented. He hated
him because he was rich, educated, favoured by fortune,--and given to
washing himself with unnecessary frequency and thoroughness. Manuel was
foul of body as well as foul at heart. He bitterly resented the sanitary
rules set up and enforced by the Council because those rules interfered
with what he was pleased to call his personal liberty. Why should he be
required to wash himself if he didn't want to do so? And why should he
do a great many silly things that Dr. Cullen ordered, just because a lot
of aristocrats were in the habit of doing them?

His hatred of Landover, however, was impersonal. The banker merely
represented a class. On the other hand, he hated Percival as an
individual; he hated him with every drop of blood in his black, venomous
heart. He had a certain grudging regard,--it might even be called
respect,--for the class to which Landover belonged; he was sometimes
conscious of a strange but quite positive sense of his own inferiority.
But he did not for an instant put Percival in the class with Landover.
He looked upon the young American as being no better than himself, and
yet the people from the Doraine had showered honours upon him, had made
him their chief, had suffered him,--a vagabond without a penny to his
name,--to marry the fairest and rarest woman of them all. What right had
this interloper to everything that was worth having, while he, an honest
fellow who always had paid his way, was denied even the smallest place
in the councils of the land? What right had he, a tramp, to sit upon a