Did we not know the genesis of Mr. Rawn, and did we not know full well the divine right of kings, we might call this rather a curious frame of mind for a man who dwelt in a small house with green blinds and a dingy back yard, for whose conjoint charms he paid but twenty dollars a month, on whose floors there was much efflorescence of art square, upon whose be-lambrequined mantels showed few works of art beyond a series of bisque shepherdesses and china dogs, on whose parlor table reclined a Dying Gaul, and on whose boudoir walls hung an engraving of the Rock of Ages. But John Rawn bided his time. He went on year after year, grave and dignified, perhaps one new cross wrinkle coming in his forehead with each Christmas, recorded by one more annual shepherdess upon the family mantel. V And yet all this time success was lying in ambush, as it sometimes does, ready to spring forth at the appointed hour. At about this time there occurred changes in the arrangement of the planets, the juxtaposition of the spheres, which meant great alteration in the affairs of John Rawn, of Kelly Row, who dwelt in a brick house six miles out from the railway office where he had worked for twenty-four years, and where he had risen in so brief a time all the way from forty to one hundred and twenty-five dollars per month. Let us dwell upon the picture for a moment, deliriously. Could it be possible that this man in time would own a large part of this railway and of others? Was it possible to predict a day when an army of clerks and others, here or there, would stand ready to jump when Rawn cracked over them a whip whose handle well fitted in his hand? Could the time be predicted, dreamed, imagined, when the president of this road, the great Henry Warfield Standley, would spring to open the door for John Rawn, twenty-four years a clerk, of whose existence he had not long known? Yet all these things actually did occur. They could occur only in America; but this is America. They could occur only at the summons of a megalomaniac selfishness, an inordinate lust of power; but here were these, biding their time, in the seriously assured mind of an American man; a man after all born of his age and of his country, and representative of that country's typical ambition--the ambition for a material success. The lust of power--that was it! The promise of power--that was what the small bird had sung in John Rawn's ear! The craving and coveting of power--that was what quivered in the marrow of his bones, that put ponderousness in his tread, that shone out of his eyes.