the first, even for the fraction of an instant, been the faintest hope
of anything but confusion emerging from the investigation; but it
played into the game without hurting anybody. If they had really
wanted to investigate, why didn't they take a case in which there were
no technicalities of law, the looted red-lands of California, for
instance; or the half-million of timber openly stolen each year for a
certain smelting ring; or the two thousand acres of coal where Smelter
City itself was built; or the shooting of the Federal Law Officer down
at that other coal mine? These cases involved no "twilight zone" of
dispute as to law, in which the "system" and the "ring" could hide.
Every Government man knew the evidence was plain and complete in these
cases: yet they were pigeon-holed, let lapse for the Statute of
Limitations to bar action. Why?

Wayland sat down on the slab seat, and the personal reasons came
trooping against his resolutions like the scouts of an oncoming host.

To begin with, he could make more money outside the Service. The
Government men were paid less than foreign ditch-diggers; but then,
which of the men remained in the Service for money? He ran his mind
over half a dozen fellows in the Agricultural Department who had
increased the nation's wealth by hundreds of millions a year. They
were working at salaries less than a Wall Street Junior clerk or office
girl. The question of salary didn't come in as an argument. That
could be dismissed. But there was the bitter fact, he was
accomplishing absolutely nothing by continuing the struggle, nothing
more than a woman yoked to a Silenus hoping to reform him when he daily
grew worse under her eyes. The Government had blocked him. The party
had blocked him. What was the pith of it all, anyway? _Should those
who had the power be given the legal right to take what they cared to