his habit of keeping his own counsel as settled. Within that year, he
had consummated the series of operations by which the L.D. and M.,
final independent road needed by his system, had "come in"; within that
year, he had closed the last finger of his grip on a whole principality
of our domain. Every laborer in that area would thenceforth do a part
of his day's delving, every merchant a part of his day's bargaining,
for Robert H. Norcross. Thenceforth--until some other robber baron
should wrest it from his hands--Norcross would make laws and unmake
legislatures, dictate judgments and overrule appointments--give the
high justice while courts and assemblies trifled with the middle and
the low. Certainly the history of that year in American finance
indicated no flagging in the powers of Robert H. Norcross.

The change which the Street had marked lay in his face--it had taken on
the subtle imprint of a first frosty day. He had never looked the power
that he was. Short and slight of build, his head was rather small even
for his size, and his features were insignificant--all except the
mouth, whose wide firmness he covered by a drooping mustache, and the
eyes, which betrayed always an inner fire. The trained observer of
faces noticed this, however; every curve of his facial muscles, every
plane of the inner bone-structure, was set by nature definitely and
properly in its place to make a powerful and perfectly coördinated
whole. In this facial manifestation of mental powers, he was like one
of those little athletes who, carrying nothing superfluous, show the
power, force and endurance which is in them by no masses of overlying
muscles, but only by a masterful symmetry.

Now, in a year, the change had come over his face--the jump as abrupt
as that by which a young girl grows up--the transition from middle age
to old age. It was not so much that his full, iron-gray hair and