He had made his money in a somewhat unexpected way by sundry dealings in stocks and shares, besides which he had bought a clever invention cheaply of the inventor--a poor man--and by dint of dexterous advertising and persistent pushing had boomed it into a big success. A far-seeing man was Mr. Oates, none too scrupulous, who regarded his fellow-men as so many sheep to be shorn of their rich fleece; but he always kept to the letter if not the spirit of the law, and therefore regarded himself as a keen business man, who had made his enormous fortune honestly. All his little knavish tricks, his taking advantage of his fellow-creatures when they were in difficulties, and his unscrupulous, unblushing lying, he designated under the collective name of business; and however scandalous his dealings might appear to God, they certainly appeared legitimate to his brother business men, who mostly acted the same way. Therefore Silas was called "a sharp business man." All his twistings and turnings and chicanery and sailing close to the wind went to pile up the dollars; and however he might have ruined less clever men than himself, however he imposed, gulled, and swindled the public, he was generally admitted in the Land of Freedom to be a 'cute man, who was a worthy representative of the great god Mammon. Charity, according to the Bible, covers a multitude of sins, but money occupies a much higher place nowadays in the covering process, and all the doubtful ways by which he had acquired his fortune disappeared in the eyes of the condoning world under the golden cover of the fortune itself. This worthy product of the nineteenth century was a short, thin, active little man, with a parchment-coloured skin, dark hair, moustache, beard, eyebrows, and eyes, and a quick, delicate restlessness about him, like a bright-eyed bird. He was dressed neatly in a quiet gray suit, wore no jewellery, not even a watch-chain, and was always on the alert to see something to his advantage. Outwardly, he was a quiet, respectable, decent little fellow, who, as the saying goes, would not harm a fly; inwardly, he was an astute blackguard, who called his evil doing "business," who always kept well within the law, and had dethroned the Deity in favour of himself. His past was bad and tricky, so much so that it would hardly bear looking into by a man with a conscience; but even though Mr. Oates had no conscience, he did not indulge much in retrospection: not that he dreaded remorse, but simply looked upon such dreaming as a waste of time.