the sunflowers and he could only make a wry face. Spiders must
have some instinctive constructive imagination to build their marvelous
webs; surely this old spider had an imagination that in Elizabeth's day
would have made him more than a minor poet. Yet in the beginning of the
Twentieth Century he felt himself a bound prisoner in his decaying web.
So he showed his blue mouth, and red eyelids in fury, and was silent
lest even his shadow should find how impotent a thing he was.

But he knew that one man knew. "How about your politics down here?"
asked the affable young man in exquisite gray twill, when he closed the
gas-works deal. And Dan'l Sands said that until recently he and Dr.
Nesbit had been cronies, but that some way the Doctor had been getting
high notions, and hadn't been around the bank lately. The young man in
the exquisite gray twill asked a few questions, catalogued the Doctor,
and then said:

"This man Van Dorn, it appears, is local attorney for all the mines and
smelters--he hasn't the reform bug, has he?"

The old spider grinned and shook his head.

"All right," said the polite young man in the exquisite gray twill, as
he picked up his gray, high hat, and flicked a speck of dust from his
exquisite gray frock coat, "I'll take matters of politics up with him."

So the spider knew that the servant had been put over the master, and
again he opened his mouth in malice, but spoke no word.

And thus it was that Judge Thomas Van Dorn formed a strong New York
connection that stood him in stead in after years. For the web that the
old spider of Market Street had been weaving all these years, was at its
strongest but a rope of sand compared with the steel links of the chain
that was wrapped about the town, with one end in the Judge's hand, but
with the chain reaching out into some distant, mysterious hawser that
moved it with a power of which even the Judge knew little or nothing.

So he was profoundly impressed, and accordingly proud, and added half an
inch to the high-knee action of his strut. He felt himself a part of the
world of affairs--and he was indeed a part. He was one of a thousand men
who, whether they knew it or not, had been bought, body and soul--though
the soul was thrown in for good measure in the Judge's case--to serve
the great, greedy spider of organized capital at whatever cost of public
welfare or of private faith. He was indeed a man of affairs--was Thomas
Van Dorn--a part of a vast bus