isn't clever enough to make money
honestly; he isn't big enough. You and me, we're honest, or try to be;
but we haven't the brain to give every man his just due, and get
ahead, too. It's the greatest game there is, but you got to be a
genius to play it. You and me, we can't do it; we ain't got the brain
and we ain't got the nerve. _I_ haven't. You've just everlastingly got
to do the best for yourself if you've got a family; the best _as_ you
see it."

"What's all this leading up to? What change have you been making,
Cater?" asked Justin, with stern abruptness.

"I've given the agency of the machine to Hardanger."

"Hardanger!" Justin's face flushed momentarily, then became set and
expressionless. To stand out on abstract questions of honor, and then
tacitly break all faith by going in with Hardanger!

"I shut down on part of my plant when I began figuring on this
change," continued Cater. "I've been getting the steel fittin's on
contract from Beuschoten again, as I did at first; it'll come cheaper
in the end. Gives us a pretty big stock to start off with. I was
sorry--I was sorry to have to turn off a dozen men, but what you going
to do? I've got to cut down on the manufacturing as close as I can
now."

"I suppose so."

"I wanted to tell you the first one," said Cater.

"Well, I congratulate you," said Justin formally, rising.

"This isn't going to make any difference in the friendship between me
and you, Mr. Alexander? I've thought a powerful lot of your
friendship. If I'd 'a' seen any way to have come in with you, I'd 'a'
done it. But business ain't going to interfere between two such good
friends as we are!"

"Why, no," said Justin, with the conventional answer to an appeal
which still pitifully claims for truth that which it has made false.
The handshake that followed was one in which all their friendship
seemed to dissolve and change its character, hardening into ice.

_Hardanger!_

Hardanger & Company represented one of the greatest factors in the
trade of two hemispheres. To say that a thing was taken up by
Hardanger meant its success. They took nothing that was not likely to
succeed; they _made_ it succeed--for them. Their agents in all parts
of the known world had easy access to firms and to opportunities hard
to be reached by those of lesser credit. Their reputation was
unassailed; they kept scrupulously to the terms agreed upon. The only
bar to putting an article into their hands was the fact