in the power of
this most remarkable group of men to accomplish. Lattimore, already a
young giantess in stature and strength, has not begun to grow, in
comparison with what is in the future for her, if she is to be made the
center of such a vast railway system as is outlined in the news item
referred to."

From which one gathers that the young men left by Mr. Giddings in charge
of his paper were entirely competent to carry forward his policy.

Jim had gone to Chicago to see Halliday, hoping to rouse in him an
interest in the Belt Line and L. & G. W. properties; but on arriving
there had telegraphed to me that he must go to New York. This message
was followed by a letter of explanation and instructions.

"Halliday spends a good deal of his time in New York now," the letter
read, "and is there at present. His understudy here advised me to go on
East. I should rather see him there than here, on account of the greater
likelihood that Pendleton may detect us: so I'm going. I shall stay as
long as I can do any good by it. Lattimore won't get the condition of
the estate worked out for a month, and until we know about that, there
won't anything come up of the first magnitude, and even if there should,
you can handle it. I don't really expect to come back with the two
million dollars for the L. & G. W., but I do hope to have it in sight!

"In all your prayers let me be remembered; 'if it don't do no good, it
won't do no harm,' and I'll need all the help I can get. I'm going where
the lobster a la Newburg and the Welsh rabbit hunt in couples in the
interest of the Sure-Thing game; where the bird-and-bottle combine is
the stalking-horse for the Frame-up; and where the Flim-flam (I use the
word on the authority of Beaumont, Fletcher & Giddings) has its natural
habitat. I go to foster the entente cordiale between our friends
Pendleton and Halliday into what I may term a mutual cross-lift, of
which we shall be the beneficiaries--in trust, however, for the use and
behoof of the captives below decks.

"Giddings and Laura are here. I had them out to a box party last night.
They are most insufferably happy. Clifford is not sane yet, but is
rallying. He is rallying considerably; for he spoke of plans for pushing
the _Herald_ Addition harder than ever when he gets home. And you know
such a thing as business has never entered his mind for six
months--unless it was business to write that 'Apostrophe to the Heart,'
which he called a poem