CHAPTER XIV

"I think you could put up the right kind of a fight," she remarked quietly.

"Just how?"

"Do what he is doing, if I could: get together all theindependent concerns that could be bought or persuaded into joining. Then you would be in a position to make terms with the railroads and force agreements from the big fellows. And I shouldn't let my scruples stand in the way, either," I added hardily.

"Naturally not—if the others were the same kind!"

"And if your husband were made like you," I thought to myself, "the chance would be worth the trying." "If," I continued aloud, "you could get the Jevons Brothers, the E.H. Harris Company, Griscom, in Omaha, and two or three others, there would be a beginning. And there is this London and Chicago concern, which could be had cheap," I mused half to myself, remembering Carmichael's words.

"I was sure you knew what must be done," she took me up in the same cool, assured tone. "You aren't the man to follow in the traces. You are the kind that leads, that builds. And this is building! What is the first step?"

I looked at her, but this time I did not laugh. She had risen from the stone bench and stood gazing out across the quiet sward to the blue lake beyond. Her dark features were alight with enthusiasm. Then she looked over at me inquiringly, expecting me to take her lead, to walk on boldly with her.

And there of a sudden—for until that moment there was nothing in my mind but to tell Mr. Dround that I was to leave him—there shot into my head a plan of how this thing might be handled, the sketch of a great campaign. All the seeds of thought, the full years'schemings, the knowledge and experience of life I had been getting—everything that was within me came surging up into one grand purpose. How it came to me of a sudden, born of a few words this woman had spoken here in the garden by the blue lake, is beyond my explanation. Suddenly I saw a way, clear and broad ahead—the way for me to travel.

"You will have to take the first steps by yourself—manage this London and Chicago Company affair on your own responsibility." Mrs. Dround's voice was now matter-of-fact, as though the time for clear thinking had come. "Then, when you have your plans ready—know just what must be done—you will have the necessary help. I can promise that!"

I understood what she meant—that Mr. Dround was not to be approached until the scheme was ripe. Then she would swing him to a decision. That was the wise way.

"You are right," I agreed. "It would be useless to trouble him until the land is mapped. When it comes to forming the company—"

"Yes, then," she interrupted, seeing my point. "Then I shall be of use."

"My,—but it's a big gamble!" I said low to myself.

"That is the only kind worth making!" she flashed.

It struck the right note in my heart. She held out her hand, and I took it in mine.

"We're partners on this thing!" I smiled.

"Yes—to the end. Now, shall we go to Mr. Dround?"

Here was a woman who should have headed a regiment, or run a railroad, or sat at a game with a large stake!

Mr. Dround opened the door on the veranda and came forward, walking feebly.

"How do you do, Harrington?" He greeted me, giving me a thin, feverish hand. "The doctor's been gone a good while, Jane," he added querulously. "I have been waiting for you in the library."

Mrs. Dround moved away while we discussed some matters of urgency, and then Mr. Dround said hesitantly: "I hope you see your way clear, Harrington, to accepting my offer. It promises a great future for a man as young as you, with your energy," he added a trifle pompously.

"It is pretty late to talk of that to-night," I replied, evasively.

Mrs. Dround was walking slowly toward us; she stopped by the marble piece in the wall and seemed to be examining it. But I knew that she was listening.

"There are some plans I want to talk over with you first. If they prove satisfactory to you, we could make an arrangement, perhaps."

Mrs. Dround turned her head and looked at us inquiringly.

"Oh, very well; I expect to be at the office to-morrow. This Commission for the Exposition takes a great deal of my time and energy just now." (It was the year before the great Fair, and Mr. Dround was one of the Commissioners for that enterprise.) "But we will take upyour plans at once," he concluded graciously, giving me his hand.

There was a family party at my house that evening. Will had arrived from Texas, where he had been to look over the field for me, and May was visiting us with her children. As I walked up the path to the house on my return from Mr. Dround's, I could hear Sarah's low laugh. She and May were rocking back and forth behind the vines of the piazza, watching the children at their supper. May was looking almost plump and had a pleasant flush on either cheek; for good times had made her blossom out. But Sarah was the handsomer woman, with her wavy, rich brown hair and soft profile. Instead of May's prim little mouth, her lips were always half open, ready to smile. As I kissed her, she exclaimed:—

"Where have you been, Van?"

"Seeing some one."

"I know," she said with a pout. "You have been with that horrid Irishman. Well, I hope you made him give you just loads of money."

"But suppose I haven't been to see John?" I asked laughingly, thinking she would be delighted to find out I was to keep on with Dround. "Suppose I took your advice?"

"What! Are you going to stay with Mr. Dround, after all? And all that money you were telling me about—millions!" she drawled in her soft voice like a disappointed child.

She seemed troubled to know that after all I had given up my chance to make money with Strauss and Carmichael.

"I guess we shan't starve, Sarah," I laughed back.

"You must do what you think best," she said finally, and repeated her favorite maxim, "I don't believe in a woman's interfering in a man's business."

After supper, as we sat out in the warm night, Will talked of his trip through the Southwest.

"It's a mighty big country down there, and not touched. You folks up North here haven't begun to see what is coming to that country. It's the new promised land!"

And he went raving on in the style I love to hear, with the sunshine of great lands on his face and the wind from the prairies blowing low in his voice. It was like music that set my thoughts in flow, and I began to see my scheme unfold, stretch out, embrace this new fertile country, reach on to foreign shores.... Then my thoughts went back to the garden by the lake, with the piece of yellow marble in the wall.

"That's a pretty little place the Drounds have behind their house," I remarked vaguely to Sarah in a pause of Will's enthusiasm.

"What were you doing in the Drounds' garden?" Sarah asked quickly.

"Oh, talking business!"

"It's a queer place to talk business."

"It's a pretty place, and there's a piece of marble in the wall they got in Italy—Siena, or some such place."

"So you were talking business with Jane?" Sarah persisted.

"Well, you can call it that. Tell me more about that country, Will. Maybe the future will take us there."

In the warm, peaceful evening, with a good cigar, anything seemed possible. While the women talked of schools and the children's clothes, I saw visions of the coming year—of the great gamble!

THE FIRST MOVE

The Chicago and London Packing Company—Bidding for bonds—A man named Lokes—A consideration for services performed—Bribery—A sheriff's sale—We take the trick—The tail of a snake—Not a gospel game

Slocum had been after the bondholders' protective committee of the London and Chicago Company. There were only a million and a half of bonds out, which, before their smash, could be picked up for less than twenty. Lately, on the rumor that one of the strong Chicago houses was bidding for them, their price had risen somewhat. The hand of Carmichael working through one of the smaller corporations controlled by Strauss was plain enough to one who watched, and I resolved as the first step in my campaign to outwit my old boss in this little deal. From the price of the bonds it was evident that Carmichael was offering the bondholders about twenty-five for the control. I told Slocum to give forty and then arrange to bid the property in at the sheriff's sale.

The lawyer reported that two of the bondholders' committee were favorable to our terms: they hated the Strauss crowd, and they were afraid to wait for better terms, as money was hardening all the time. But thethird man, who had been the treasurer of the defunct corporation, held out for a higher figure. Slocum thought that this man, whose name was Lokes, might be dickering with Carmichael secretly to secure some favors for himself in the deal. This Lokes was not unknown to me, and I considered Slocum's suspicions well founded. He had left behind him in Kansas City a bad name, and here in Chicago he ran with a set of small politicians, serving as a middleman between them and the financial powers who used them. In short, I knew of but one way to deal with a gentleman like Mr. Lokes, and I had made up my mind to use that way.

Slocum made an appointment with Lokes in his office, and I went there to meet him and arrange to get the London and Chicago outfit with as little delay as possible. Lokes was a small, smooth-shaven fellow, very well dressed, with something the air of a horsy gentleman. First he gave us a lot of talk about the value of the London and Chicago properties, and the duty of his committee to the bondholders. He and his associates had no mind to let the property go for a song. I made up my mind just what inducement would reach him, while he and Slocum argued about the price of the bonds. When Lokes began to throw out Carmichael at us, I broke in:—

"Mr. Lokes, you know there isn't much in this deal for that crowd. But I don't mind telling you frankly that it is of prime importance to the interests we represent."

Slocum looked up at me, mystified, but I went on:—

"We propose to form a large packing company, into which we shall take a number of concerns on which we have options. We want this property first. When our company is formed we might make it very well worth your while having been friendly to us in this transaction."

Lokes didn't move a muscle: this was the talk he had been waiting for, but he wanted to hear the figures. I told him enough of our plans to let him see that we had good backing and to whet his appetite.

"Now we have offered your committee forty cents on the dollar for your bonds, which is fifteen more than the other crowd will give you. If you will induce your associates to take bonds in our corporation, we will give you fifty, instead of forty—and," I concluded slowly, "there will be fifty thousand dollars of preferred stock for your services."

At the word "services" Slocum jumped up from the table where he had been seated and walked over to the window, then came back to the table, and tried to attract my attention. But I kept my eyes on Lokes.

"What will you do for the others?" Lokes asked significantly, meaning his two associates on the committee.

"Nothing!" I said shortly. "You will look after them. They will do what you say. That is what we pay for."

It was plain enough that I was offering him a good-sized bribe for his services in turning over to us the assets of the London and Chicago concern rather than to ourrivals, and for bonds in the prospective company instead of cash. That did not trouble him: he was aware that he had not been asked to meet me to talk of the health of the bankrupt company of which he had been the treasurer. Lokes thought awhile, asked some more questions about our company, and finally hinted at his preference for cash for his services.

"Either forty cash with no bonus for your services, or fifty in bonds with the preferred stock for you," I answered shortly.

Pretty soon he took his hat and said he was going to see his associates on the committee, and would be back in the course of the afternoon.

"He's gone over to Carmichael," I remarked to Slocum, when he had closed the office door behind Mr. Lokes. "But John won't touch him—he won't believe his story. He doesn't think I've got the cash or the nerve to play this game. We'll see him back in an hour or two."

"Do you know, Van, what you are doing?" Slocum asked sombrely, instead of replying to my remark. "You have bribed that man to betray his trust."

"I guess that was what he came here for, Sloco. But we are offering them a good price for their goods. This man Lokes happens to be a rascal. If he had been straight, we could have saved that preferred stock. That's all there is to it."

But Slocum still shook his head.

"It's a bad business."

"Well, it costs money. But I mean to put this thing through, and you know at the best I may lose every centI have made in twelve years. It's no time to be squeamish, Slocum."

"I wish—" he began, and paused.

"You wish, if there is any more of this kind of thing, I would get some one else to do my business? But I can't! I must have a man I can rely upon."

It meant a good reward for him, too, if we carried through my great plan. But Slocum was not the one to be reached in that way. He needed the money, and wanted it badly, but money alone wouldn't make him stick by me. I knew that.

"We'll hope this is the last," I said, after a time. "And, besides, I take the risk. I want you, and you won't go back on me. I need you, Slo!"

He made no reply.

Sure enough, late that afternoon Slocum telephoned me that Lokes had come back and signified his consent and that of his associates to our terms. The bondholders would take notes, to be converted later into bonds of the new company at fifty cents on the dollar. Lokes asked for some kind of agreement about the stock he was to get for his "services," which I refused to give him, on Slocum's advice. He had to content himself with Slocum's statement that he was dealing with gentlemen.

That comedy took place on the court-house steps according to law.

The next step in the proceedings was the sheriff's sale of the defunct corporation's effects, which was ordered by the court for the following Monday. That comedy took place on the court-house steps according to law. The sheriff read the decree of court to an audience ofhoboes, who were roosting on the steps, and some passers-by halted to see the proceedings. When the sheriff asked for bids, a little Jew lawyer in a shiny silk hat stepped forward out of the crowd and made his bid. This was Marx, the junior member of a firm employed by Strauss. Just as the sheriff was about to nod to the Jew, Slocum stepped forward with a certified check in his hand and bid in the property for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

There was nothing for Marx to do; Carmichael had given him no instructions for this contingency. He had his orders, and he stood there with his jaw hanging, while Slocum handed in the certified check and completed the formality of the sale.

"It is fraud!" Marx shouted, shaking his fist in my face as we left.

Perhaps he was right; but whatever fraud there was in the transaction did not concern Marx or the men he represented. They had been euchred at their own game. And they knew it: we never heard anything more from the Strauss crowd about the London and Chicago bonds.

"Well, you've got it," Slocum said, as we came away from the sale. "I hope we won't have trouble with Lokes."

"That's all right," I replied. "We've got him where he can't make trouble."

"There's usually a tail to this kind of thing—you never can tell when you have reached the end."

But I was too jubilant to take gloomy views. The skirmish was over, and we were a step nearer my goal.

A few days after that I ran across John Carmichael as I was picking my way in the muck out of the Yards. He was driving in a little red-wheeled road wagon such as the local agents use for running about the city. He called out:—

"Hey, Van Harrington! Come over here!"

"Can't Strauss do any better by you than that? Or maybe you have gone back to collecting again?" I asked.

The Irishman grunted his acknowledgment of my joke, and we talked about one thing and another, both knowing perfectly well what there was between us. Finally he said it:—

"So you thought you could do better by sticking with the old man?"

I nodded.

"How long do you think he'll keep goin'?"

"About as long as I stay with him, John."

"And you put him up to buying that junk at the auction the other day?" he added.

"I bought it for myself," I replied promptly.

"The h—l you did! Say, kid, this ain't any gospel game you are in. You needn't look for favors from our crowd."

"We aren't asking any just now. When we want them, I guess we'll get all that we need."

"You will, will you?" Big John raised his whip and hit his horse as if he meant to lay the same lash on me one of these days. The red-wheeled cart disappeared down the road, the figure of the burly Irishman leaning forward and flecking the horse with his lash.

THE ATLAS ON THE FLOOR

A tell-tale portrait—When the fire of life has gone—The guiding hand—A woman who understands—The highroads of commerce—The great Southwest—Dreams—The art of life—"No one asks, if you succeed"

Mr. Dround's illness kept him away from business for a mouth or more. He had always been in delicate health, and this worry over the loss of Carmichael and the bad outlook in his affairs was too much for him. His absence gave me the opportunity to form my plans undisturbed by his timidity and doubts. After he recovered, his time was much absorbed by the preparations for the Fair, in which he was much interested. In all this I could see a deft hand guiding and restraining—giving me my rein. At last, when I was ready to lay my plans before Mr. Dround, I made an appointment with him at his house.

He was sitting alone in his great library, looking at a picture which one of the artists attracted to the city by the Fair was painting of him. When he heard my step he got up sheepishly and hung a bit of cloth over the portrait, but not before I had seen the cruel truth the painter had been telling his patron. For the face on the canvas was old and gray; the daring and spirit to fight, whatever the man had been born with, had gone out of it. I pitied him as he stood there by his picture, his thin lips trembling with nervousness. He seemed to shrink from me as though afraid of something. We sat down, and after the first words of politeness neither of us spoke. Finally he asked:—

"Well, Harrington, how do you find matters now that you have had time to look into the situation?"

"Very much as I expected to find them," I replied bluntly. "And that is as bad as could be. Something must be done at once, and I have come to you to-day to settle what that shall be."

He flushed a little proudly at my words, but I plunged in and sketched the situation to him as it had become familiar to me. At first he was inclined to interrupt and question my statements, but he saw that I had my facts. As I went on, showing him how his big rivals had taken his markets—how his business had fallen so that he could no longer get those special rates he had been too virtuous to accept—he seemed to slink into his chair. It was like an operation; but there was no use in wasting time in pity. His mind must be opened. Toward the end he closed his eyes and looked so weak that once I stopped. But he motioned to me to go on.

"And what do you advise?" he asked weakly at the end.

"I have already begun to act," I replied with a smile, and outlined what had been done.

He shook his head.

"That has been tried before. All such combinationshave failed. Strauss, or one of the others, will split it up."

I did not believe that the combination which I had to propose would be so easily disturbed. In the midst of our argument some one came into the room behind us and paused, listening. I stopped.

"What is it, my dear?" Mr. Dround said, looking up. "We are talking business."

"Yes," she said slowly. She was in street clothes, with hat, and she began to draw off her gloves slowly. "Shall I disturb you?"

"Why, no," he answered indifferently, and I resumed my argument. Mrs. Dround sat down behind the table and opened some letters, busying herself there. But I felt her eyes on my words. Unconsciously I addressed the rest of my argument to her. When I had finished, Mr. Dround leaned back wearily in his seat and sighed:—

"Yours is a very bold plan, Mr. Harrington. It might succeed if we could get the necessary financial support. But, as you know well enough, this is hardly the time to provide money for any venture. The banks would not look favorably upon such a speculative suggestion. We shall have to wait until better times."

"We can't wait," I said brusquely. "Bad times or not, we must act."

"Well, well, I will think it over. It is time for my medicine, isn't it, Jane?" he said, looking fretfully at his wife.

It was a broad hint for me to take myself off, and my wild schemes with me. For a moment I felt disgustedwith myself for believing that anything could be accomplished with this failing reed. Mrs. Dround came softly up to her husband's chair and leaned over him.

"You are too tired for more business to-day, dear. Come—let me get your medicine."

She took his arm and with all the gentleness in the world led him from the room, motioning to me with one hand to keep my seat. When they had gone I removed the cloth from the portrait on the easel and took a good look at it. It was the picture of a gentleman, surely. While I was looking at it, and wondering about the man, Mrs. Dround came back into the room and stood at my side.

"It is good, isn't it?"

"Yes," I admitted reluctantly, thinking it was only too good. As I replaced the cloth over the picture, I noticed that her lips were drawn tight as if she suffered. I had read a part of their story in that pathetic little way in which she had led her husband from the room.

"So you have started," she said soon, turning away from the picture. "How are you getting on? Tell me everything!"

When she had the situation before her, she remarked:—

"Now is the time to take the next step, and for that you need Mr. Dround's help."

"Exactly. These separate plants must be taken over, a holding company incorporated, and the whole financed. It can be done if—"

"If Mr. Dround will consent," she finished my sentence, "and give his aid in raising the money?"

Her shrewdness, immediate comprehension, roused my admiration. But what was her interest in the scheme? As Sarah had told me, it was generally believed that Jane Dround had a large fortune in her own right. Why should she bother with the packing business? She might spend her time more agreeably picking up Italian marbles. Her next words partly answered my wonder:—

"Of course, he will see this, and will consent; or prepare to lose everything."

I nodded.

"I don't like to pull out of things," she said slowly.

"Mr. Dround is in such poor health," I objected.

"This is not his fight: it is yours. All that he can do is to give you your first support. Leave that to me. Tell me what you will do with this corporation—what next?"

She was seated in a little chair, resting her dark head upon her hands. Her eyes read my face as I spoke. Again, as the other time when we had spoken in the garden, I felt as though lifted suddenly on the wings of a strong will. At a bound my mind swept up to meet her mind. On the shelf near by there was a large atlas. I took it down, and placing it on the rug at our feet, turned the leaves until I came to the plate of the United States.

"Come here. Look there!" I said, indicating the entire eastern third of the map with a sweep of my hand. "There is nothing for us that way to be had. We could never get to the seaboard. The others own that territory."

The map was streaked with lines of railroad running like the currents of a great river from the broad prairies of the Dakotas, across the upper Mississippi Valley, around the curve of the Great Lakes, eastward to the Atlantic seaboard.

"Those are the old highroads," I went on, following the lines of trade with my finger. "And those are the old markets. We must find a new territory, make it, create the roads. And it must be a territory that is waiting, fertile, unexplored! Here it is!"

My hand ran down the map southwestward, crossing Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Indian Territory, resting on the broad tract marked Texas.

"For us that will be what the Northwest has been for our fathers. There lies the future—our future!"

"Our future," she repeated slowly, with pleasure in the words. "You plan to feed this land?"

"Settlers are pouring in there, now, like vermin. The railroads are following, and already there are the only strong markets we have to-day—those I have been building up for five years."

We sat there on the floor before the atlas, and the bigness of the idea got hold of both of us. I pointed out the great currents of world trade, and plotted a new current, to rise from that same wheat land of the Dakotas, flowing southward to the ports of the Gulf. Already, as I knew, the wheat and corn and meat of this Western land had begun to turn southward, avoiding the gate of Chicago with its heavy tolls, to flow by the pathof least resistance out through the ports of the Gulf to Europe and Asia.

I pointed out the great currents of world trade.

"This is but the beginning, then—this packing company?" she questioned slowly, putting her finger on the inner truth, as was her wont.

"Perhaps!" I laughed back in the recklessness of large plans. "The meat business is nothing to what's coming. We shall have a charter that will let us build elevators, railroads, own ports, run steamship lines—everything that has to do with the handling of food stuffs. Some day that canal will be dug, and then, then"....

I can't say how long we were there on our knees before that atlas. It may all seem childish, but the most astonishing thing is that most of what we imagined then has come true in one way or another. And faster even than my expectation.

At last we looked up, at the same moment, and our eyes rested on the portrait above us. The cloth had slipped from the canvas, and there was the speaking face, old and saddened—the face without hope, without desire. It seemed the face of despair, chiding us for our thoughts of youth and hope. Mrs. Dround arose from the floor and hung the cloth in its place, touching the portrait softly here and there. Then she stood, resting her hands on the frame, absorbed in thought. A kind of gloom had come over her features.

"This—this scheme you have plotted, is life! It is imagination!" She drew a long breath as though to shake off the lethargy of years. "That art," she pointedto the picture of a pale, ghostly woman's face, hanging near by us on the wall—"that is a mere plaything beside yours."

"I don't know much about art: that is the work of a man's own two hands. But mine is the work of thousands and thousands, hands and brains. And it can be ruined by a trick of fate."

"No, never! You shall have your chance—I promise it—I know! Sit down here and let us go back to the first steps and work it out again carefully."

So there in the fading twilight of the afternoon was formed the American Meat Products Company. Again and again we went over the companies to be included, the sources of credit, the men to interest, the bankers from whom money might be had.

"It is here we must have Mr. Dround's help," I pointed out significantly.

She nodded.

"When this step is taken, I think he ought to go abroad—he needs the rest. He could leave all else to you, I think."

I understood; the corporation once formed, he would drop out.

"There might be matters to which he would object—"

She translated my vague words.

"No one asks, if yousucceed," she answered tranquilly.

And with that observation were settled those troublesome questions of morality which worried Mr. Dround so deeply.

As I left I said in homage:—

"If this thing is pulled off, it will beyours!"

"Oh, no! Mr. Dround doesn't like women to meddle with business. It is all yours, all yours—and I am glad to have it so."

Her eyes came back to mine, and she smiled in dismissal.

THE STRUGGLE

Hard times—How to make something out of nothing—The problem of finance—Getting help—Cousin Farson—A trip down the coast—Paternal admonition—The beautiful city beside the lake—The last ditch—A strong woman's nonsense—The Drounds sail for Europe—I am in command

It is not my purpose to recall all the details of the crowded years that followed. From the autumn of '92, when the events that I have just related occurred, through the period of deepening depression in all business and the succeeding era of prosperity, I can do little more than touch here and there upon more vital events. Suffice it to say that we were met at the start with hard times, a period of tight money, which prevented the quick realization of my plan to incorporate the properties that had been gathered together. One way and another the companies were carried along, by issuing notes and securing what financial help could be got, waiting for the favorable time to launch our enterprise. Here Mr. Dround was a strong help: once committed to the undertaking, he persuaded others and used his credit generously. Sometimes he looked back, seeking to retreat from the positions to which he was being forced; but he saw only ruin behind him, and perforce went ahead.

Strange to say, we met at first little or no opposition from our strong rivals. Whether it was that Strauss and his crowd were willing to let the mice foregather into one trap before showing their claws, or that they despised us as weaklings, no one could say. We were able, even, to join the great packers in one of those private agreements that made it possible for us to secure our share of the home trade. Mr. Dround was aware of this fact, but averted his eyes. Necessity knows little squeamishness. It must have filled John Carmichael with unholy joy to know that Dround had come to this compromise with his virtue.

So, in spite of the hard times, we pushed on, branching out here and there as the chance offered, building a plant in Texas, where Will was sent to take charge, and making a deal with a car line that had been started by some Boston men. But the time came when we had to have more money, and have it at once. There was none to be raised in Chicago, where the frost of the panic had settled first and hardest. Slocum, who was my right hand all these months, suggested that the money might be had from the Boston men who owned the car line. So in July, '93, we made a hurried trip to the East. They were frightened in Boston, and we met with little but disappointment. Men were waiting for Congress to repeal the silver law, or do something else to make it pleasant, and wouldn't listen to putting out another dollar in a Chicago enterprise. Then it occurred to Slocum that we might interest a man he knew named Farson, the rich man of his old home, Portland.

Farson, we found, was down the coast somewhere on his vacation, and we followed after him. It was the first time I had ever been in that part of the country, and the look of it was queer to me—a lot of scrawny, rocky fields and wooden-built towns. When we failed to find Farson in Portland, it did not seem to me worth while to go on—I doubted if there was as much money in the whole town as we had to have; but Sloco was strongly of the opinion that these Maine people had fortunes tucked away in their old stockings. So we kept on down the coast, and found our man at his summer cottage, on a little rocky island.

This Mr. Farson was a short, wiry, little man, almost sixty years old, with a close-cropped gray mustache, and looked for all the world like a retired school-teacher. He received us on his front piazza, and it took him and Slocum half an hour to establish just the degree of cousinship they were to each other. I wanted to laugh and to put in: "We've come to make your fortune, cousin. It don't make any difference whether you are third once removed or second twice removed." But I thought it likely that Slocum knew his business best with these people and kept quiet.

When Slocum got around to saying that we were interested in various Western enterprises, the weather seemed to grow cool all of a sudden. But Cousin Farson listened politely and asked some good questions at the end. Then he let us go all the way across the harbor to the hotel where we had put up, to get our dinner. I thought we had lost him, but Slocum thought not. ForCousin Farson had asked us to go fishing with him in the afternoon.

"He might have given us a sandwich," I growled to Slocum. "That place of his looks as if he could afford it."

Slocum smiled at my irritation.

"He did not ask you down here. He doesn't feel responsible for your coming. Probably Cousin Susan would need a warning before inviting two strangers to dinner."

Well, the little old schoolmaster came over in the afternoon with a very pretty steam launch. The fishing was not all a pretence. He liked to fish; but I never saw a man who listened as keenly as that man did. And I did the talking. I let him see that we were engaged on a big work; that in putting his dollars into our packing-houses he wasn't just taking a flyer, way off at the end of the earth. I had had some experience in dealing with men by this time; it was no raw young schemer who came to this party. And I had observed that what men want when they are thinking of putting their money into a new enterprise is to have confidence in the men who will spend their dollars. My experience has shown me that the cheapest thing to get in this world is money. If you have the ideas, the money will flow like water downhill. At any rate, that was the way it worked with good Mr. Farson.

We stayed there in Deer Isle three days, and had one simple meal in the banker's house after Cousin Susan had been duly warned. At the end of the time Farson thought he would give us a couple of hundred thousanddollars and take some of our bonds, and he thought maybe his brother-in-law would take a few more, and also his brother-in-law's brother. In short, Mr. Farson was the first one in a long row of bricks. He went up with us on the Boston boat, when we started back, to secure the others. It was a glorious night early in August, and, after Slocum had gone to bed, the old banker and I sat up there on the deck watching the coast fade away in the moonlight. I had never seen anything like it before in my life—the black rocks starting right out of the water, the stiff little fir trees, the steep hills rolling back from the sea.

The black rocks starting right out of the water.

"This is the prettiest thing I have ever seen!" I exclaimed. "My wife must come down here next summer."

"Yes," the old gentleman replied, with evident pleasure in my praise of his native rocks. "I can tell you that there is very little in the world to compare with the charm of this coast."

Then he began to talk of other lands, and I found that he had been all over the earth. He talked of Italy, and India, and Japan, and parts of Russia. After a time he began to ask me questions about myself, and being aneasy talker, and happy over the success we had had, I told him a good deal of my story, and how I had come to enter the present undertaking. It was easy to tell him things—he had quick sympathy and was as keen as a boy. He seemed to approve of my general plan, but advised patience.

"This silver trouble will lead to a period of bad times," he remarked.

"The very time to prepare," I retorted.

"True," he laughed, "when you have the faith and energy. But I am an old man. I wish to live in peace the rest of my life. Young man, I have been through two panics and the war. I lost a son while I was in the Wilderness. He would have been about your age," he added, in a far-away tone.

That switched the talk from business, and we sat there on deck until nearly dawn, discussing religion all the time. As he bade me good-by at the Boston station the next evening, I remember his saying to me with one of the pleasantest smiles I ever saw on a man's face:—

"Now, Mr. Harrington, I can see that yours will be a busy life. Success will come not merely in these matters, but in many others." He wagged his head confidently. "I don't make many mistakes in men. But if you ever want to have such pleasant talks as we had last night, when you get to be an old man like me, you must see to it that your hands are kept clean. Remember that, my boy!" And he patted my shoulder like a father.

It was a queer thing for one man to say to another at the end of a business day. I had occasion to think of itlater, although at the time I put it down to the old gentleman's eccentricity. We parted very cordially. I felt that a valuable ally had been secured—one who had it in his power to bring others with him to our aid,—and I liked the old boy himself.

Among other things, Mr. Farson had asked me casually about a little line of Missouri railroad—the St. Louis Great Southern, it was called. He and his friends were pretty well loaded with the securities of this bankrupt little road, and the banker wanted me to look into it and advise him what to do with the property. Thus it happened that the St. Louis Great Southern became another link in my plan of conquest. Altogether it was a most important connection, that between us and Farson's crowd, and it was fortunate that Slocum thought of Cousin Farson in our hour of need.

All this time there had been building the beautiful city of white palaces on the lake, and it was now open for the world to see what Chicago had dreamed and created. Although it had made me impatient to have Mr. Dround spend on it his energy that was needed in his own business, now that it was accomplished, in all its beauty and grandeur, it filled me with admiration.

There were few hours that I could spend in its enjoyment, but I remember one evening after my return from the East when we had a family party at the Fair. May and Will were spending his vacation with us during the hot weather, and the four of us, having had our dinner, took an electric launch and glided through the lagoonsbeneath the lofty peristyle out to the lake, which was as quiet as a pond. The long lines of white buildings were ablaze with countless lights; the music from the bands scattered over the grounds floated softly out upon the water; all else was silent and dark. In that lovely hour, soft and gentle as was ever a summer night, the toil and trouble of men, the fear that was gripping men's hearts in the market, fell away from me, and in its place came Faith. The people who could dream this vision and make it real, those people from all parts of the land who thronged here day after day—their sturdy wills and strong hearts would rise above failure, would press on to greater victories than this triumph of beauty—victories greater than the world had yet witnessed!

Nevertheless, in spite of hopeful thoughts like these, none knew better than I the skeleton that lay at the feast, the dread of want and failure that was stealing over all business. But for that night we were happy and without fear....

As our launch drew up at the landing beside the great fountain, another launch glided by our side, holding a number of the Commissioners and some guests of distinction. Among them were the Drounds, who had entertained liberally all this season. The two boat parties came to shore together, and stood looking at the display of fireworks. The Court of Honor was thronged with thousands and thousands; the great fountain rippled in a blaze of light; the dark peristyle glowed for a moment in the fantastic flame from the fireworks. I turned and caught the light of the illuminationin the dark face of Jane Dround. She bowed and smiled.

"In your honor!" she murmured half mockingly, as a rocket burst into a shower of fiery spray in the heavens above. "I hear that you return from Boston victor. You should hear Henry! He has no doubts now." She laughed in high spirits, and we stood there awhile gazing.

"To-night I have no doubts; but to-morrow—who knows?"

Her brows contracted seriously.

"You need, my friend, one great quality, and you must get it somehow—patience!"

"That is true, but—"

"Patience!" she repeated slowly; "the patience that covers years. Perhaps you think that is a woman's virtue, but men, too, must have it if they are to endure. Remember—patience! Now, before any one comes, let me tell you: we are to leave for Europe as soon as the Fair closes. Do you think that it will be all right by that time? Say yes or no," she added, as we were approached by May and Sarah.

"Yes," I answered with a strange feeling of sadness.

Once more, before we left the grounds, I caught a moment of talk with Mrs. Dround.

"To you the game—the great game!" she exclaimed softly. "And to me the waiting. But remember, one useless woman is watching across the water every move you make, and when the time comes that you want help, when you cannot go on alone—"

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