for the
advice on any matter of detail when you feel like it. In a general way
I can only throw out one suggestion now, and it's at variance with the
views you seem to hold. Go over to the Hogarth people, and make the
most reasonable terms you can with them."

"That's what you would do in my place?" Weston asked, with a twinkle
in his eyes.

"I've been a blame fool once or twice in my time," Stirling admitted.
"It's curious that it didn't cost me quite as much as most people
expected. Still, what I've given you is excellent advice."

He waved his hand as though to indicate that he had closed the
subject, but when Weston took his departure half an hour later the
contractor looked remarkably thoughtful.

"If he weren't up against the Hogarth Combine he and Wannop might put
that scheme through," he mused. "As it is, I guess one way or another
I've got to help him out."

Then he rose and descended to the room where his daughter was.

"I've had an interesting talk with Mr. Weston," he said indifferently.
"That's quite a smart young man, but I guess one could call him a
little obstinate."

Ida smiled at this, though she suspected her father's observation was
not quite as casual as it seemed.

"Yes," she said, "in some respects I think he is. But how has he made
that clear to you?"

Stirling, sitting down opposite her, laughed.

"He's had an offer for his mine that most of the bush prospectors
would have jumped at, and if he'd played his cards judiciously the
people who made it would no doubt have doubled it. I suggested that
course to him, but it wasn't any use. Mr. Weston is one of the men who
can't make a compromise."

"Isn't that a reasonable attitude? He presumably wants his rights."

"The little man," observed Stirling, "has no rights that he isn't
prepared to hold on to in a rather uneven fight. With Weston it's all
or nothing, and just now I don't quite know which he'll get. He and
his partners will have to stake everything they own on a very
uncertain game."

"Hasn't everybody who goes into business speculations to do that now
and then?"

"No," said Stirling, reflectively, "I don't think they have. Quite
often the people who deal with them have to face part of the hazard.
In a general way they've something to fall back on if they're men of
position: the money they've settled on their wives, a name that would
get them credit on the market, or friends who'd give them a lift if
they came down with a b