As Stuart dressed for Nan\'s party he brooded over his new relation to his old sweetheart with increasing pleasure. She had begun to tease him with gentle raillery about his tragic exaggeration of the treachery of her betrayal, and laughingly promised to make it all up by introducing him to a group of the richest and most beautiful girls in New York. He could take his choice under her wise guidance. She promised to begin his course of instruction to-night.

Never had Bivens\'s offer seemed more generous and wonderful. His pulse beat with quickened stroke as he felt the new sense of power with which he would look out on the world as a possible millionaire.

He gazed over the old Square with a feeling of regret at the thought of leaving it. He had grown to love the place in the past years of loneliness. He had become personally acquainted with every tree and shrub and every limb of the nearby trees. He had watched them grow from his window, seen them sway in the storm, bow beneath the ice, and grow into new beauty and life each spring. He was deciding too soon, perhaps. There were some features of Bivens\'s business he must understand more clearly before he could give up his freedom and devote himself body and soul to the task of money-making as his associate.

He resolved to make his decision with deliberation. But if he should go in for money, he wouldn\'t forget his old friends, nor would he leave Washington Square. He would buy that corner plot on Fifth Avenue across the way for his house. There should be two beautiful suites in it for the doctor and Harriet, and from their windows they could always see the old home on the other side. He would buy the two adjoining houses, turn them into a sanitarium, endow it and place the doctor in charge. And he would give him a fund of ten thousand a year for his outside work among the poor.

He woke from his reverie with a start and looked at his watch to find he had been standing there dreaming for half an hour. He hurried across the Square to take a cab at the Brevoort.

His mood was buoyant. He was looking out on life once more through rose-tinted glasses. At Eighth Street he met at right angles the swarming thousands hurrying across town from their work—heavy looking men who tramped with tired step, striking the pavements dully with their nailed shoes, tired anxious women, frouzle-headed little girls, sad-eyed boys half-awake—all hurrying, the fear of want and the horror of charity in their silent faces. And yet the sight touched no responsive chord of sympathy in Stuart\'s heart as it often had. To-night he saw only the thing that is and felt that it was good.

He pushed his way through the shabby throng, found a cab, sprang in and gave his order to the driver. A row of taxicabs stood by the curb. He took an old-fashioned hansom from choice. It seemed to link the present moment of his life to the memory of some wonderful hours he had spent, with Nan by his side, years ago.

As the cab whirled up Fifth Avenue he leaned back in his seat with a feeling of glowing satisfaction with himself and the world. The shadows of a beautiful spring night slowly deepened as the city drew her shining mantle of light about her proud form. The Avenue flashed with swift silent automobiles and blooded horses. These uptown crowds through whose rushing streams he passed were all well dressed and carried bundles of candy, flowers and toys. The newsboys were already crying extras with glowing advance accounts of the banquet and ball.

Stuart felt the contagious enthusiasm of thousands of prosperous men and women whose lives at the moment flowed about and enveloped his own. This was a pretty fine old world after all, and New York the only town worth living in.

And what was it that made the difference between the squalid atmosphere below Fourth Street and the glowing, flashing, radiant, jewelled world up-town? Money! It meant purple and fine linen, delicacies of food and drink, pulsing machines that could make a mile a minute, high-stepping horses and high-bred dogs, music and dancing, joy and laughter, sport and adventure, the mountain and the sea, freedom from care, fear, drudgery and slavery!

After all in this modern passion for money might there not be something deeper than mere greed; perhaps the regenerating power of the spirit pressing man upward? Certainly he could only see the bright side of it to-night and the wonder grew on him that he had lived for twenty-five years in a fog of sentiment and ignored deliberately the biggest fact of the century, while the simpler mind of the poor white boy in Bivens had grasped the truth at once and built his life squarely on it from the beginning. Well, he had set his mind to it at last in time to reach the highest goal of success, if he so willed. For that he was thankful.

As his cab swung into Riverside Drive from Seventy-second Street the sight which greeted him was one of startling splendour.

Bivens\'s yacht lay at anchor in the river just in front of his house. She was festooned with electric lights from the water line to the top of her towering steel masts. From every shroud and halyard hung garlands of light, and the flags which flew from her peaks were illumined with waving red, white and blue colours. From the water\'s edge floated the songs of Venetian gondoliers imported from Italy for the night\'s festival, moving back and forth from the yacht.

The illumination of the exterior of the Bivens house was remarkable. The stone and iron fence surrounding the block, which had been built at a cost of a hundred thousand dollars, was literally ablaze with lights. Garlands of tiny electric bulbs had been fastened on every iron picket, post and cross bar, and the most wonderful effect of all had been achieved by leading these garlands of light along the lines of cement in the massive granite walls on which the iron stanchions rested. The effect was a triumph of artistic skill, a flashing electric fence built on huge boulders of light.

The house was illumined from its foundations to the top of each towering minaret with ruby-coloured lights. Each window, door, cornice, column and line of wall glowed in soft red. The palace gleamed in the darkness like a huge oriental ruby set in diamonds.

Stuart passed up the grand stairs through a row of gorgeous flunkies and greeted his hostess.

Nan grasped his hand with a smile of joy.

"You are to lead me in to dinner, Jim, at the stroke of eight."

"I\'ll not forget," Stuart answered, his face flushing with surprise at the unexpected honour.

"Cal wishes to see you at once. You will find him in the library."

Bivens met him at the door.

"Ah, there you are!" he cried cordially, "Come back down stairs with me. I want you to see some people as they come in to-night. I\'ve a lot of funny things to tell you about them."

The house was crowded with an army of servants, attendants, musicians, singers, entertainers and reporters.

The doctor had been recognized by one of the butlers whom he had befriended on his arrival from the Old World. The grateful fellow had gone out of the way to make him at home, and in his enthusiasm had put an alcove which opened off the ball room at his and Harriet\'s disposal. The doctor was elated at this evidence of Bivens\'s good feeling and again congratulated himself on his common sense in coming.

Bivens led Stuart to a position near the grand stairway, from which he could greet his guests as they returned from their formal presentation to the hostess.

He kept up a running fire of biographical comment which amused Stuart beyond measure.

"That fellow, Jim," he whispered, as a tall finely groomed man passed and touched his hand, "that fellow is as slick a political grafter as ever stole the ear-rings from the sleeping form of a fallen angel. He levies blackmail on almost every crime named in the code. But you can\'t prove it in court and he\'s worth millions. His influence on legislation is enormous and he can\'t be ignored. He\'s one of the kind who like this sort of thing, and he goes everywhere. Money is power. No matter how you get it. Once gotten, it\'s divine. Call the man a thief and grafter if you will, but the laws of centuries protect him. There are no rights now except property rights. I\'d like to kick him out of the house. I\'d as lief a toad or a lizard touched my wife\'s hand, but he\'s here to-night, well, because I\'m afraid of him."

Stuart nodded.

"Yes. I tried to send the gentleman to the penitentiary last year."

"But you didn\'t even get in speaking distance of him, did you?"

"No, and——"

"You bet you didn\'t; he\'s a lawyer himself."

"I thought he smiled when he shook hands."

"You remember that old Latin proverb we used to get off at college? I was punk in Latin, but I never forgot that—\'Harus pex ad harus picem\' when one priest meets another it\'s to smile! The lawyers are the high priests of the modern world. Only the women support the church."

"At least we can thank God there are only a few such men who force their way into decent society."

"I guess you are right," Bivens answered, "and he couldn\'t do it by the brute power of his money only. He has brains and culture combined with the daring of the devil. Still, Jim, most of the big bugs who come here to-night live in glass houses and have long ago learned that it don\'t pay to throw stones."

A titled nobleman passed, and Bivens winked.

"The poor we have with us always!"

Stuart smiled and returned at once to the point.

"Just what did you mean by that last remark about glass houses?"

"Simply this, old man, that all these high-browed society people who turn up their noses behind my back and marvel at my low origin and speak in bated whispers about my questionable financial strokes—all have their little secrets. For my own comfort I\'ve made a special study of great fortunes in America. The funny thing is that apparently every one of them was founded on some questionable trick of trade."

"Not every one, surely."

"In my study of the subject I ran across a brilliant young Socialist by the name of Gustavus who has devoted his life to the study of the origin of these fortunes. He has written a book about them. I have read it in manuscript. It will fill four volumes when completed. Honestly I\'ve laughed over it until I cried. For instance, speaking of the devil, here comes Major Viking. His people are no longer in trade. Such vulgarity is beneath them. He comes here because I\'m supposed to be worth a hundred million and belong to the inner circle of the elect. There are less than two dozen of us, you know."

"Delighted to greet you, Major. My old friend and college mate, James Stuart."

The proud head of the house of Viking grasped Stuart\'s hand and gave it a friendly shake. His manner was simple, unaffected, manly and the bronzed look of his face told its story of life in the open.

"Not our distinguished young district attorney whom the politicians had to get rid of?" he asked in tones of surprise and pleasure.

"The very same," Bivens answered gravely.

The Major gripped Stuart\'s hand a second time.

"Then I want to shake again and offer you my congratulations on the service you have rendered the Nation. It\'s an honour to know you, sir."

Stuart was too much amazed at such a speech to reply before the tall figure had disappeared.

Bivens pressed his arm.

"That\'s why I could afford to pay you a million a year."

"You don\'t mean to say that his fortune is streaked with the stain of fraud?" Stuart asked, in low tones.

"Certainly. Personally, he\'s a fine fellow. He\'s a big man and lives in a big world. His fortune is not less than two hundred million, securely salted down in gilt-edged real estate, most of it. But the original fortune was made by fraud and violence in the old days of colonial history. The elder Viking was a furrier. The fur trade was enormously profitable. Why? Because the whole scheme was built on the simple process by which an Indian was made drunk and in one brief hour cheated out of the results of a year\'s work. His agents never paid money for skins. They first used whiskey to blind their victims and then traded worthless beads and trinkets for priceless treasures of fur. And on such a foundation was the great house founded."

"It\'s incredible."

"The facts have been published. If they were not true the publisher could be driven out of business. The Vikings maintain a dignified silence. They have to do it, but softly, here is the head of the house of Black Friday. Everybody knows about his father\'s sins. Yet he was the friend and comrade of the great who were canonized while he was cannonaded. Good fellow, too, all the same breed when you come right down to it, only some of them have the genius for getting away with the goods and saving their reputations at the same time."

"For instance?" Stuart asked.

Bivens craned his neck toward the stairs.

"There\'s one of them, now, one of the great railroad kings, not one of your Western bounders, but the real Eastern, New York patriotic brand, one of the brave, daring pioneers who risked all to push great transcontinental railroads through the trackless deserts of the West—with millions furnished by the government—which they dumped into their own pockets while the world was shouting their praises for developing the Nation\'s resources."

"My friend, Mr. James Stuart, Mr. Van Dam."

It was with difficulty that the young lawyer kept his face straight during those introductions.

Van Dam bowed with grave courtesy, and when he was beyond the reach of Bivens\'s voice the little dark biographer went on:

"Old Van Dam, the founder of the house, whose palaces now crowd Fifth Avenue, was a plain-spoken, hard-swearing, God-fearing, man-hating old scoundrel who put on no airs, but simply went for what he wanted and got it. He was the first big transportation king we developed. His ............