l is rented to me. The land is mine,
and I can do everything but actually dispose of it. But on top of that
comes another twist: if I haven't developed the business within five
years into double what it was at the peak of its best development, back
goes everything into a trust fund, out of which I am to have a hundred
dollars a month, nothing more. That's what I'm out here for, Ba'tiste,
to find out why, in spite of the fact that I've worked day and night
now for a year and a half, in spite of the fact that I've gone out and
struggled and fought for contracts, and even beaten down the barriers
of dislike and distrust and suspicion to get business--why I can't get
it! Something or some one is blocking me, and I'm going to find out
what and who it is! I think I know one man--Thayer. But there may be
more. That's why I'm playing this game of lost identity. I thought I
could get out here and nose around without him knowing it. When he
found out at once who I was, and seemed to have had a previous tip that
I was coming out here, I had to think fast and take the first scheme
that popped into my head. Maybe if I can play the game long enough, it
will take him off his guard and cause him to work more in the open.
They may give me a chance to know where I stand. And I've got to know
that, Ba'tiste. Because--" and his voice was vibrant with
determination, "I don't care what happens to me personally. I don't
care whether five minutes after I have made it, I lose every cent of
what I have worked for. But I do care about this; I'm going to make
good to my father's memory. I'm going to be able to stand before a
mirror and look myself straight in the eye, knowing that I bucked up
against trouble, that it nearly whipped me, that it took the unfairest
advantage that Fate can take of a man in allowing my father to die
before I could fully right myself in his eyes, but that if there is a
Justice, if there is anything fair and decent in this universe, some
way he'll know, some way he'll rest in peace, with the understanding
that his son took up the gauntlet that death laid down for him, that he
made the fight, and that he won!"

"_Bon_--good!" Old Ba'tiste leaned over the foot of the bed. "My
Pierre--he would talk like that. _Bon_? Now--what is it you look for?"

"In the first place, I want to know how so many accidents can happen in
a single plant, just at the wrong time. I want to know why it is that
I can go out and