"Mr. McQuade, I am interested to learn what is back of your note. Horses?" "No; not horses." McQuade viewed the young man through half-closed eyes. The contractor was a big hulk of a man, physically as strong as a bull, with reddish hair, small twinkling eyes, a puffy nose mottled with veins, thin lips shaded by a bristling red mustache, and a heavy jaw. The red fell of hair on his hands reminded Warrington of a sow's back. Everything about McQuade suggested strength and tensity of purpose. He had begun work on a canal-boat. He had carried shovel and pick. From boss on a railway section job he had become a brakeman. He took a turn at lumbering, bought a tract of chestnuts and made a good penny in railroad ties. He saved every dollar above his expenses. He bought a small interest in a contracting firm, and presently he became its head. There was ebb and tide to his fortunes but he hung on. A lighting contract made him a rich man. Then he drifted into politics; and now, at the age of fifty, he was a power in the state. The one phase of sentiment in the man was the longing to possess all those obstacles that had beset his path in the days of his struggles. He bought the canal-boat and converted it into a house-boat; he broke the man who had refused him a job at the start; he bought the block, the sidewalk of which he had swept; every man who stood in his way he removed this way or that. He was dishonest, but his dishonesty was of a Napoleonic order. He was uneducated, but he possessed that exact knowledge of mankind that makes leaders; and his shrewdness was the result of caution and suspicion. But like all men of his breed, he hated with peculiar venom the well-born; he loved to grapple with them, to wrest their idleness from them, to compel them to work for a living, to humiliate them. The fiber in McQuade was coarse; he possessed neither generosity nor magnanimity; the very men who feared him held him in secret contempt. "No, Mr. Warrington, I haven't any horses for sale to-day," he began. "Not very long ago you met Senator Henderson at your club. He offered you the nomination for mayor this fall, and you accepted it." Warrington could not repress a start of surprise. He had not quite expected this. He was annoyed. "That is true. What mystifies me," he supplemented, "is how this knowledge came to your ears." "I generally hear what's going on. My object in asking you to call is to talk over the matter on a friendly basis." "I can not see what good that will do. Politically we have nothing in common." "Politically or socially. But the point is this. What have you done that you should merit this honor? I'll talk frankly. What have you done toward the building up of your city? What have you done toward its progress in manufacturing and building? You have done nothing but buy a house on the fashionable street and pay the taxes." "You might add that I once peddled vegetables," said Warrington.