his son-in-law who was a red Democrat and rising daily in
the good graces of the party bosses.

This young man who was sipping his plain soda and commenting on neither
the scenery nor the weather, had inspired Gwynne with a certain interest
and curiosity. He was thirty but looked little over twenty, and his
large limpid blue eyes were as guileless as a child's. He had a long
pale face with an indifferent complexion and the common American lantern
jaw. His hair and brows and lashes were paler than straw, and his long
lank figure was without either distinction or muscularity. Nevertheless,
there was a curious suggestion of cynical power in his impassive face
and lolling inches, and Gwynne had made up his mind that he would be
useful as a study in politics.

Mr. Wheaton, one of the present "City Fathers," a position he had
occupied with brief intermittences for many years, had hard china-blue
eyes and a straight mouth, in a large square smoothly-shaven face. He
had crossed the plains in the Fifties from the inhospitable State of
Maine, sought fortune in the gold diggings with moderate success,
avoided San Francisco with a farmer's dread of "sharpers," and drifting
to the hamlet at the head of Rosewater Creek had opened a small store
for general merchandise. Frugality and a shrewd knowledge of what men
wanted and women thought they wanted had increased his capital so
rapidly that in five years he had converted a wing of the store into a
bank. To-day he was a power. His wife was the leader of Rosewater
society and attended first nights in San Francisco.

Mr. Larkin T. Boutts was new to Gwynne, although his status was easily
to be inferred from the constant references in the local press. He was a
fat little man who sat habitually with a hand on either knee, which he
clawed absently both in conversation and thought. Otherwise his attitude
was one of extreme repose, even watchfulness. He was excessively neat,
almost fashionable in his dress, which--Gwynne was to observe in the
course of time--was invariably brown. He had a small pointed beard and a
sharp direct dishonest eye. He was the leading hardware merchant of
Rosewater and owned the hotel and the opera-house. His business methods
had never been above criticism, and his politics drove the San Francisco
correspondent, during legislative sittings, into a display of caustic
virtue which gave the newspaper he represented just the necessary smack
of reform and did not hurt i