newspaper-attack upon the Professor as he hoped would force him to
abandon the struggle. When this failed, and Mr. Gulmore saw that it had
done worse than fail, that it had increased his opponent's energy and
added to his popularity, he went to work again to consider the whole
situation. He must win and win "big," that was clear; win too, if
possible, in a way that would show his "smartness" and demonstrate his
adversary's ignorance of the world. His anger had at length been
aroused; personal rivalry was a thing he could not tolerate at any time,
and Roberts had injured his position in the town. He was resolved to
give the young man such a lesson that others would be slow to follow his
example.

The difficulty of the problem was one of its attractions. Again and
again he turned the question over in his mind--How was he to make his
triumph and the Professor's defeat sensational? All the factors were
present to him and he dwelt upon them with intentness. He was a man of
strong intellect; his mind was both large and quick, but its activity,
owing to want of education and to greedy physical desires, had been
limited to the ordinary facts and forces of life. What books are to most
persons gifted with an extraordinary intelligence, his fellow-men were
to Mr. Gulmore--a study at once stimulating and difficult, of an
incomparable variety and complexity. His lack of learning was of
advantage to him in judging most men. Their stock of ideas, sentiments
and desires had been his for years, and if he now viewed the patchwork
quilt of their morality with indulgent contempt, at least he was
familiar with all the constituent shades of it. But he could not make
the Professor out--and this added to his dislike of him; he recognized
that Roberts was not, as he had at first believed, a mere mouthpiece of
Hutchings, but he could not fathom his motives; besides, as he said to
himself, he had no need to; Roberts was plainly a "crank," book-mad, and