time, in
the days of the sixth Edward of England, when the great landowners found
it more profitable to consolidate the farms, seize the common lands, and
acquire riches hitherto undreamed of. Hence the rising of tailor Ket and
others, and the leveling of fences and barriers, and the eating of many
sheep. It may have been that Mr. Vane had come across this passage in
English history, but he drew no parallels. His first position of trust
had been as counsel for that principality known in the old days as the
Central Railroad, of which a certain Mr. Duncan had been president, and
Hilary Vane had fought the Central's battles with such telling effect
that when it was merged into the one Imperial Railroad, its stockholders
--to the admiration of financiers--were guaranteed ten per cent. It was,
indeed, rumoured that Hilary drew the Act of Consolidation itself. At any
rate, he was too valuable an opponent to neglect, and after a certain
interval of time Mr. Vane became chief counsel in the State for the
Imperial Railroad, on which dizzy height we now behold him. And he found,
by degrees, that he had no longer time for private practice.

It is perhaps gratuitous to add that the Honourable Hilary Vane was a man
of convictions. In politics he would have told you--with some vehemence,
if you seemed to doubt--that he was a Republican. Treason to party he
regarded with a deep-seated abhorrence, as an act for which a man should
be justly outlawed. If he were in a mellow mood, with the right quantity
of Honey Dew tobacco under his tongue, he would perhaps tell you why he
was a Republican, if he thought you worthy of his confidence. He believed
in the gold standard, for one thing; in the tariff (left unimpaired in
its glory) for another, and with a wave of his hand would indicate the
prosperity of the nation which surrounded him,--a prosperity too sacred
to tamper with.

One article of his belief, and in reality the chief article, Mr. Vane
would not mention to you. It was perhaps because he had never formulated
the article for himself. It might be called a faith in the divine right
of Imperial Railroads to rule, but it was left out of the verbal creed.
This is far from implying hypocrisy to Mr. Vane. It was his
foundation-rock and too sacred for light conversation. When he allowed
himself to be bitter against various "young men with missions" who had
sprung up in various States of the Union, so-called purifiers of
politics, he would c