down, he divined, were the integrities and
the stabilities. These big captains of industry and masters of
finance, he decided, were the men to work with. By the very nature of
their huge deals and enterprises they had to play fair. No room there
for little sharpers' tricks and bunco games. It was to be expected
that little men should salt gold-mines with a shotgun and work off
worthless brick-yards on their friends, but in high finance such
methods were not worth while. There the men were engaged in developing
the country, organizing its railroads, opening up its mines, making
accessible its vast natural resources. Their play was bound to be big
and stable. "They sure can't afford tin-horn tactics," was his summing
up.

So it was that he resolved to leave the little men, the Holdsworthys,
alone; and, while he met them in good-fellowship, he chummed with none,
and formed no deep friendships. He did not dislike the little men, the
men of the Alta-Pacific, for instance. He merely did not elect to
choose them for partners in the big game in which he intended to play.
What that big game was, even he did not know. He was waiting to find
it. And in the meantime he played small hands, investing in several
arid-lands reclamation projects and keeping his eyes open for the big
chance when it should come along.

And then he met John Dowsett, the great John Dowsett. The whole thing
was fortuitous. This cannot be doubted, as Daylight himself knew, it
was by the merest chance, when in Los Angeles, that he heard the tuna
were running strong at Santa Catalina, and went over to the island
instead of returning directly to San Francisco as he had planned.
There he met John Dowsett, resting off for several days in the middle
of a flying western trip. Dowsett had of course heard of the
spectacular Klondike King and his rumored thirty millions, and he
certainly found himself interested by the man in the acquaintance that
was formed. Somewhere along in this acquaintanceship the idea must have
popped into his brain. But he did not broach it, preferring to mature
it carefully. So he talked in large general ways, and did his best to
be agreeable and win Daylight's friendship.

It was the first big magnate Daylight had met face to face, and he was
pleased and charmed. There was such a kindly humanness about the man,
such a genial democraticness, that Daylight found it hard to realize
that this was THE John Dowsett, president of