of you thought of the storm last night as a circumstance that imperiled
human life and my property. He did. You lay still in your beds listening
to the rain on the roof, and sinking into sweet slumbers to the tune of
its pattering. He was up and out, and risking his life to meet the
emergency. Can't you see that that makes all the difference between a
successful man and an unsuccessful one? Can't you understand that--oh,
pshaw! What's the use of talking to stumps?"

That was the very longest speech that Captain Will Hallam had ever made
in his life. It was not without effect. It did not inspire any of the
clerks to fresh endeavor, or to a more conscientious service. But it
made every one of them an implacable enemy of Guilford Duncan, and
inflamed every one of them with an insatiable desire to injure him
whenever occasion might offer.

Thus, by his night's heroic endeavor, Guilford Duncan had succeeded not
only in making an enemy of Captain Kennedy, but in making himself
_anathema_ _maranatha_ in the Hallam office besides.

He was taking a bath, however, at that time, and not thinking of these
matters.

X

ALLIANCE, OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE

"How did you come to do that?"

That was the first question Captain Hallam fired at Duncan after the
hotel waiter had quitted the room to bring a further supply of coffee
and broiled bacon.

"Why, it's simple enough," answered Duncan, with a touch of
embarrassment in his tone. "You see, I was up there yesterday gauging
coal. I knew the barges were anchored in a dangerous position, and so
when the storm broke, there wasn't anything else to do but get into my
clothes and send the tug up there to the rescue."

"But it wasn't your business to look after the coal up in the bend?"

Duncan slowly drank three sips of coffee before answering that eagerly
questioning remark. Then he leant forward and said, slowly and with
emphasis:

"I conceive it to be my business, and my duty as well as my pleasure, to
do all that I can to promote the interest of the man who employs me."

"But that was a risky thing to do. You took your life in your hands, you
know?"

"I suppose I did, but that's a small matter. There were twenty other
lives in danger. And what is one man's life when there is a duty to be
done? We've all got to die sometime."

Captain Hallam did not utter the thought that was in him. That thought
was:

"Well, of all the queer men I have ever had to deal with, yo