ker's face.

"Oh PLEASE!" cried the boy, "I do want to get in something real! It will
be the making of me!"

"Now see here," interposed Thorpe suddenly, "you don't even know my
name."

"I know YOU," replied the boy.

"My name is Harry Thorpe," pursued the other. "My father was Henry
Thorpe, an embezzler."

"Harry," replied Wallace soberly, "I am sorry I made you say that. I
do not care for your name--except perhaps to put it in the articles of
partnership,--and I have no concern with your ancestry. I tell you it
is a favor to let me in on this deal. I don't know anything about
lumbering, but I've got eyes. I can see that big timber standing up
thick and tall, and I know people make profits in the business. It isn't
a question of the raw material surely, and you have experience."

"Not so much as you think," interposed Thorpe.

"There remains," went on Wallace without attention to Thorpe's remark,
"only the question of--"

"My honesty," interjected Thorpe grimly.

"No!" cried the boy hotly, "of your letting me in on a good thing!"

Thorpe considered a few moments in silence.

"Wallace," he said gravely at last, "I honestly do think that whoever
goes into this deal with me will make money. Of course there's always
chances against it. But I am going to do my best. I've seen other men
fail at it, and the reason they've failed is because they did not demand
success of others and of themselves. That's it; success! When a general
commanding troops receives a report on something he's ordered done, he
does not trouble himself with excuses;--he merely asks whether or not
the thing was accomplished. Difficulties don't count. It is a soldier's
duty to perform the impossible. Well, that's the way it ought to be with
us. A man has no right to come to me and say, 'I failed because such and
such things happened.' Either he should succeed in spite of it all; or
he should step up and take his medicine without whining. Well, I'm going
to succeed!"

The man's accustomed aloofness had gone. His eye flashed, his brow
frowned, the muscles of his cheeks contracted under his beard. In the
bronze light of evening he looked like a fire-breathing statue to that
great ruthless god he had himself invoked,--Success.

Wallace gazed at him with fascinated admiration.

"Then you will?" he asked tremulously.

"Wallace," he replied again, "they'll say you have been the victim of an
adventurer, but the result will prove them wrong. If I