The pity of it, the tragedy of it! He, Magnus, the "Governor," who had been so staunch, so rigidly upright, so loyal to his convictions, so bitter in his denunciation of the New Politics, so scathing in his attacks on bribery and corruption in high places; was it possible that now, at last, he could be brought to withhold his condemnation of the devious intrigues of the unscrupulous, going on there under his very eyes?
That Magnus should not command Harran to refrain from all intercourse with the conspirators, had been a matter of vast surprise to Mrs.Derrick.Time was when Magnus would have forbidden his son to so much as recognise a dishonourable man.
But besides all this, Derrick's wife trembled at the thought of her husband and son engaging in so desperate a grapple with the railroad--that great monster, iron-hearted, relentless, infinitely powerful.

Always it had issued triumphant from the fight; always S.
Behrman, the Corporation's champion, remained upon the field as victor, placid, unperturbed, unassailable.

But now a more terrible struggle than any hitherto loomed menacing over the rim of the future; money was to be spent like water; personal reputations were to be hazarded in the issue; failure meant ruin in all directions, financial ruin, moral ruin, ruin of prestige, ruin of character.

Success, to her mind, was almost impossible.

Annie Derrick feared the railroad.