of greeting and congratulation, but the portion accorded Cadet
Captain "Geordie" Graham, like that of Little Benjamin, exceeded all
others, and a prominent banker and business man, visiting the Point for
the first time, was moved to inquire why.

"I think," said the officer addressed, a man of his own age, though his
spare form and smooth-shaven cheek and chin made him look ten years
younger--"I think it is that Graham has been tried in all manner of
ways and has proved equal to every occasion. They say he's sheer grit."

A keen and close observer was the banker--"a student of men," he called
himself. He had been tried in many a way and proved equal to every
occasion. He had risen from the ranks to the summit. He, too, they said
in Chicago, was "sheer grit." Moreover, they did not say he had "made
his pile out of others' losings"; but, like most men who have had to
work hard to win it, until it began to come so fast that it made
itself, John Bonner judged men very much by their power to earn money.
Money was his standard, his measure of success.

And this, perhaps, was why John Bonner could never understand his
brother-in-law, the colonel, a most distinguished soldier, a modest and
most enviable man.

Twenty-five years had Bonner known that now gray-haired, gray-mustached
veteran. Twenty-five years had he liked him, admired him, and much of
late had he sought to know him, but Hazzard was a man he could not
fathom.

"Fifteen years ago," said he to a fellow-magnate, "I told that man if
he'd quit soldiering, and bring Carrie and the children to Chicago, I'd
guarantee him an income ten times the regular pay he's getting; and he
smiled, thanked me, and said he was quite content--content, sir, on two
thousand a year, and so, too, was Sis. Now, think of that!"

And Bonner was bubbling over with the same idea to-day, yet beginning
to see light. Two prominent senators, men of world-wide renown, held
Hazzard long in close conference, and were merely civil to him, the
magnate, who, as he said, "could buy the three of 'em three times
over." A general whose name was but second to that of Grant seized his
brother-in-law by both hands, and seemed delighted to greet him, yet
had barely a word for "his millions," him to whom the Board of Trade
bowed humbly at home. A great war secretary, whom they had recently
dined at the Grand Pacific and whose dictum as to the purchase of
supplies meant much to Chicago, but vaguely remembered