oing to school any more.

"I'm perfectly willing to jump in and work," he explained. "There's
nothing in a classical education for me. Let me go into the office,
and I guess I'll pick up enough to carry me through."

Old Archibald Kane, keen, single-minded, of unsullied commercial
honor, admired his son's determination, and did not attempt to coerce
him.

"Come down to the office," he said; "perhaps there is something you
can do."

Entering upon a business life at the age of eighteen, Lester had
worked faithfully, rising in his father's estimation, until now he had
come to be, in a way, his personal representative. Whenever there was
a contract to be entered upon, an important move to be decided, or a
representative of the manufactory to be sent anywhere to consummate a
deal, Lester was the agent selected. His father trusted him
implicitly, and so diplomatic and earnest was he in the fulfilment of
his duties that this trust had never been impaired.

"Business is business," was a favorite axiom with him and the very
tone in which he pronounced the words was a reflex of his character
and personality.

There were molten forces in him, flames which burst forth now and
then in spite of the fact that he was sure that he had them under
control. One of these impulses was a taste for liquor, of which he was
perfectly sure he had the upper hand. He drank but very little, he
thought, and only, in a social way, among friends; never to excess.
Another weakness lay in his sensual nature; but here again he believed
that he was the master. If he chose to have irregular relations with
women, he was capable of deciding where the danger point lay. If men
were only guided by a sense of the brevity inherent in all such
relationships there would not be so many troublesome consequences
growing out of them. Finally, he flattered himself that he had a grasp
upon a right method of living, a method which was nothing more than a
quiet acceptance of social conditions as they were, tempered by a
little personal judgment as to the right and wrong of individual
conduct. Not to fuss and fume, not to cry out about anything, not to
be mawkishly sentimental; to be vigorous and sustain your personality
intact--such was his theory of life, and he was satisfied that it
was a good one.

As to Jennie, his original object in approaching her had been
purely selfish. But now that he had asserted his masculine
prerogatives, and she had yielded, at least