The Sword of Wealth By Henry Wilton Thomas Author of “The Last Lady of Mulberry.” G. P. Putnam’s Sons New York and London The Knickerbocker Press 1906 COPYRIGHT, 1906 BY HENRY WILTON THOMAS The Knickerbocker Press, New York CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I.--THE UNEXPECTED MAN 1 II.--TARSIS 20 III.--A DREAM REALISED 35 IV.--A FACT OF LIFE 48 V.--THE SCALES OF HONOUR 63 VI.--A CENSORED DISPATCH 73 VII.--A MESSAGE FROM ROME 84 VIII.--A WEDDING JOURNEY 97 IX.--A SEED OF GRATITUDE 109 X.--THE DOOR OF FRA PANDOLE 128 XI.--BY ROYAL COMMAND 136 XII.--AN UNBIDDEN GUEST 158 XIII.--AN INDUSTRIAL INCIDENT 166 XIV.--AN HOUR OF RECKONING 179 XV.--A BILL PAYABLE 189 XVI.--HUNTING THE PANTHER 204 XVII.--THE POT BOILS OVER 216 XVIII.--MARIO PLAYS THE DEMAGOGUE 233 XIX.--WHAT MONEY COULD NOT BUY 249 XX.--THE HEART’S LAW-MAKING 263 XXI.--A CALL TO SERVICE 279 XXII.--TARSIS ARRAIGNED 291 XXIII.--FETTERS STRUCK OFF 303 XXIV.--A CHASE IN THE MOONLIGHT 310 The Sword of Wealth CHAPTER I THE UNEXPECTED MAN A WEEK before the day set for her wedding, in a bright hour of early April, Hera rode forth from the park of Villa Barbiondi. Following the margin of the river, she trotted her horse to where the shores lay coupled by a bridge of pontoons--an ancient device of small boats and planking little different from the sort Cæsar’s soldiers threw across the same stream. She drew up and watched the strife going on between the bridge and the current--the boats straining at their anchor-chains and the water rioting between them. Italy has no lovelier valley than the one where flowed the river on which she looked, and in the gentler season there is no water-course more expressive of serene human character. But the river was tipsy to-day. The springtime sun, in its passages of splendour from Alp to Alp, had set free the winter snows, and Old Adda, flushed by his many cups, frolicked ruthlessly to the sea. Peasant folk in that part of the Brianza had smiled a few days earlier to see the great stream change its sombre green for an earthy hue, because it was a promise of the vernal awakening. Yet their joy was shadowed, as it always is in freshet days, by dread of the havoc so often attending the spree of the waters.