ld
and engross his abilities, killing two birds with one stone. Probably he
would be approached in a similar manner very often, until he became a
definite quantity, and in time would grow accustomed to it; and callous.
But at present he was hot and sickened, the more so as he felt that he
had received a new impulse to believe in himself. These vast
corporations--the railroad, street railways, lighting, and telephone
companies, were the ones that dictated to San Francisco, and were
supposed to have debauched the Board of Supervisors, all of them small
laborers, elevated by the Boss to serve his ends--counted their capital
by the millions; in one case, at least, by the hundred million. They had
already bought much of the best talent in the country, and they wasted
no time on the second-rate. Gwynne could easily guess in whose teeming
and orderly brain the scheme to seduce and attach himself had been
shaped, and, with the American contempt for the perspicacity of any
foreigner, had selected this judge, with his breezy direct tactful
manner, as certain to edge the newcomer into the fold. To Gwynne the
only saving grace in the whole interview was that he had not been
tempted. Had he been he should have felt utterly demoralized, disposed
to take himself at the valuation of the business-like unsentimental
brains in power.

He found his judge awakening from a nap before his library fire and
dusting the crumbs from his beard.

"This is an unexpected pleasure," the old gentleman began, then stopped
short. "What is the matter?" he asked, anxiously. "Sit down."

"What does indigenate mean?"

"Why--a purely technical term for citizenship."

"A friend of yours called upon me to-day, on the strength of having
known the Otises, and remarked that it was a pity I was ever discharged
from my American indigenate."

"That you renounced American citizenship upon coming of age. It is a
pity."

"But I remember doing no such thing. I did no such thing. I certainly
should remember it."

"You mean that you made no formal act of renunciation of your American
birthright, obtained no certificate of British nationality?"

"I did nothing of the sort. It is possible that my father did it for
me--"

"Your father could do nothing." Judge Leslie was staring at him.
Suddenly he laughed. "You _are_ British! I am almost inclined to believe
you hopeless. How did I get the impression that you had formally
expatriated yourself? From Isabel, who, n