, that's what Pendleton and Wade have been
counting on from the first."

"You ought to see Halliday and Pendleton at once," said I.

"Yes, I think so, too," he rejoined. "Pendleton'll pay us more than our
price, rather than see the Halliday system get the properties. They're
deep ones; but we ought to be able to play them off against each other,
so long as we can keep strong at home. I'll begin the flirtation at
once."

Cornish, assuming that Jim had fully concurred in his views, bade us a
pleasant good-day, and went out.

"My boy," said Jim, "cheer up. If gloom takes hold of you like this
while we're still running before a favoring wind, it'll bother you to
keep feeling worse and worse, as you ought, as we approach the real
thing. Cheer up!"

"Oh, I'm all right!" said I. "I was just trying to make out Cornish's
position."

"Let's make out our own," he replied, "that's the first thing. Bear in
mind that this is a buccaneering proposition, and you're first mate:
remember? Well, Al, we've had the merriest cruise in the books. If any
crew ever had doubloons to throw to the birds, we've had 'em. But, you
know, we always draw the line somewhere, and I'm about to ask you to
join me in drawing the line, and see just what moral level piracy has
risen or sunk to."

He still walked back and forth, and, as he spoke of drawing the line, he
drew an imaginary one with his fingers on the green baize of the
flat-topped desk.

"You remember what those fellows, Dorr and Wickersham, said the other
night, about having invested the funds of estates, and savings accounts
in our obligations?" he went on. "But I never told you what Wickersham
said privately to me. The infernal fool has more of our paper than his
bank's whole capital stock, with the surplus added, amounts to! And he
calls himself a 'conservative New England banker'! It wouldn't be so bad
if the states back East weren't infested with the same sort of
idiots--I've had Hinckley make me a report on it since that night. It
means that women and children and sweaty breadwinners have furnished the
money for all these things we're so proud of having built, including the
Mt. Desert cottages and the Wyoming hunting-lodge. It means that we've
got to be able to read our book of the Black Art backwards as well as
forwards, or the Powers we've conjured up will tear piecemeal both them
and us. God! it makes me crawl to think of what would happen!"

He sat down on the flat-topped de