ce ordering the army of workmen in the adjacent rooms with
the precision and authority of a field-marshal.

The situation amused and at the same time disconcerted the humorous
American, as he settled back in a chair before the great wood fire which
crackled in the chimney. Though the chair was soft and yielding he did
not look comfortable, for men with long, bony, angular figures never
seem to look at their ease.

Abraham Windsor's name twenty years before the date of this story would
not have added to the marketable value of the most modest promissory
note in the money markets of Chicago, to which city he had come fresh
from his father's farm in upper Illinois; but at this time it was a
tower of strength in financial quarters, and men counted his wealth by
tens of millions.

He was the Jupiter of the financial world, and men said that when his
iron-gray locks fell over each other, as he nodded, Wall Street trembled
and Lombard Street crashed; so that it seemed only from forbearance that
he did not sweep all the chips upon the great gaming-table of the world
into his deep pockets. His sudden trip to Europe had caused much
discussion. Some knowing ones whispered that he had bought a
controlling interest in the Bank of England from the assignees in
bankruptcy of the Brothkinders, with the object of making a panic in
trade by a sudden raise of the rate of discount to six per cent; others,
that he had come over to unload upon the British public his shares in
the Hudson Bay and Cape Horn Railroad Company.

He was amused by the wild rumors, for he had, in truth, come to England
with no deep-laid scheme or motive, but simply because his daughter had
ordered his doing so; for while Abraham Windsor ruled the shares market
and the world of speculation, a certain young woman ruled him, and the
hard-headed man of affairs, who could outwit an Israelite banker, was as
wax under her dainty fingers. At the close of the last season at
Newport, Miss Margaret had ordered her father, as she poured out his
coffee at breakfast, to engage a country house in England for the
winter. Mr. Windsor looked up from the New York _Herald_, which likened
him to his Satanic Majesty in one column and described his new steam
yacht in another, and he said, "Aye, aye, miss," to her order.

And straightway after breakfast he went to the Casino Club and
telephoned to Jarley Jawkins for his list of estates to rent in England,
for he knew full well that whe