promote the beneficent outreachings of corporate capital, and be the
adviser of the man or men to whom the greater America owes its place at
the head of the civilized nations.

Oddly enough, though Gantry's attitude had been uncompromisingly
partisan, Blount had failed to recognize in the railroad official a
skilful pleader for the special interests--the interests of the few
against those of the many. Hence he was preparing to go to the new field
with a rather strong prepossession in favor of the defendant
corporation. In their later conversation Gantry had intimated pretty
broadly that there was room for an assistant corporation counsel for the
railroad, with headquarters in the capital of the Sage-brush State.
Blount assumed that the requirements, in the present crisis at least,
would be political rather than legal, and in his mind's eye he saw
himself in the prefigured perspective, standing firmly as the defender
of legitimate business rights in a region where popular prejudice was
capable of rising to anarchistic heights of denunciation and attack.

The picture pleased him; he would scarcely have been a true descendant
of the fighting Blounts of Tennessee if the prospect of a conflict had
been other than inspiring. If there were to be no Patricia in his
future, ambition must be made to fill all the horizons; and since work
is the best surcease for any sorrow, he found himself already looking
forward in eager anticipation to the moment when he could begin the
grapple, man-wise and vigorously, in the new environment.

It was after the ashes had been knocked from the bedtime pipe that
Blount left his chair and the secluded corner of the veranda to go down
among the parked automobiles on the lawn. His one recreation--and it was
the only one in which he found the precious fillip of enthusiasm--was