“Who, me?” Flint’s voice took the knife-edge of sarcasm.  “Oh, sure!  It don’t need but one leg to keep up with a gent trying to run a thirty-six hour a day job with one-man power, does it?  Son, take it from me, when a man’s got the real, simonpure, no-imitation, soulsaving bug in his bean, a forty-legged cyclone couldn’t keep up with him, much less a guy with one pedal short.”  He glared at me indignantly.  From the first it has been one of his vainest notions that I am perversely working myself to death.

“There’s nothing to be done with the Padre, then, I’m afraid,” said Laurence, chuckling.

“I might soak him in the cyanide jar for ten minutes a day without killing him,” mused Mr. Flint.  “But,” disgustedly, “what’d be the use?  When he came to and found he’d been that long idle he’d die of heart-failure.”  He pushed aside the window screen, and the two shook hands heartily.  Then the boy, wringing my hand again, walked away without another word.  I felt a bit desolate—­there are times when I could envy women their solace of tears—­as if he figured in his handsome young person that newer, stronger, more conquering generation which was marching ahead, leaving me, older and slower and sadder, far, far behind it.  Ah!  To be once more that young, that strong, that hopeful!

When I began to reflect upon what seemed visionary plans, I was saddened, foreseeing inevitable disillusion, perhaps even stark failure, ahead of him.  That he would stubbornly try to carry out those plans I did not doubt:  I knew my Laurence.  He might accomplish a certain amount of good.  But to overthrow Inglesby, the Boss of Appleboro—­for he meant no less than this—­why, that was a horse of another color!

For Inglesby was our one great financial figure.  He owned our bank; his was the controlling interest in the mills; he owned the factory outright; he was president of half a dozen corporations and chairman and director of many more.

Did we have a celebration?  There he was, in the center of the stage, with a jovial loud laugh and an ultra-benevolent smile to hide the menace of his little cold piglike eyes, and the meaning of his heavy jaw.  Will the statement that he had a pew in every church in town explain him?  He had one in mine, too; paid for, which many of them are not.

At the large bare office in the mill he was easy of access, and would listen to what you had to say with flattering attention and sympathy.  But it was in his private office over the bank that this large spider really spun the web of our politics.  Mills, banks, churches, schools, lights, railroads, stores, heating, water-power—­all these juicy flies apparently walked into his parlor of their own accord.  He had made and unmade governors; he had sent his men to Washington.  How?  We suspected; but held our peace.  If our Bible had bidden us Americans to suffer rascals gladly—­instead of mere fools—­we couldn’t be more obedient to a mandate.