"You see that bunch of newspaper reporters over there? They are the ghosts that haunt my dreams. Oh, not what they'll say in their dirty papers. We can control that, we own them. But there's a magazine muckraker among them. He has nosed his way in here to-night as a reporter, for some devilish purpose. He has been down in North Carolina, moving heaven and earth to find my poor old father and mother and get under my hide with a biographical sketch. He has written a volume of lies about them already--but list, here's another one of the great ones you must know, old Grantly, the proud possessor of a fortune made in the services of the Nation for the nominal consideration of fifty per cent. profit, a typical Civil War nabob." Bivens bowed with exaggerated courtesy to the great man, introduced him and said with a quiet sneer: "The kind that makes me really sick is the patriotic poser. I suppose it was because my dad wasn't a very brave soldier." He laughed quietly. "Remember the day you knocked those brutes down at college for forcing me to make a speech in praise of my father's heroism? I could have died for you that day, Jim." "Oh, that was nothing," Stuart protested lightly. "To you, maybe, but to me--well, as I was saying, the great man who just passed is very proud, not only because he is a multi-millionaire but because his house is supposed to be one of the pillars of the Nation. The truth is that during the Civil War he formed a 'Union Defense Committee' and raised funds to carry on the war. Incidentally--quite incidentally, of course--he got contracts for supplies from the Government and made millions by the frauds he practised. One of his tricks was the importation of worthless arms from Europe which he sold the Government at enormous profits. He made more than a half-million selling these worthless guns to the State authorities of the North. The Hall Carbine was his favourite weapon, a gun that would blow the fingers off the soldier who tried to shoot it, but was never known to do any harm to the man who stood in front of it. I never knew what the fellow meant when he said 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,' until I became personally acquainted with that gentleman." Bivens bent low and whispered: "The sweetest memory of my life is that I pulled a couple of millions of wool out of his hide in the recent panic. Jim, you love to hunt. You don't know what real sport is until you jump a skunk like that in a panic. You go all the way to Virginia to shoot ducks. When you get to my office in Wall Street I'll take you on a hunt you'll not forget. What's the use to waste your time for a whole day trying to kill a poor little duck when there are hundreds of big, fat, juicy animals like that roaming around loose in New York!" "I see," Stuart laughed, "that's what you mean by the game." "Surely, my boy,--it's the only game worth playing, this big red game of life and death with a two-footed human beast the quarry."