s distantly backgrounding--that the Major granted the lease of
the coal lands on purely personal grounds; would, indeed, have waived
the matter of consideration entirely, if Caleb had not insisted. Had not
the iron-master been raised to the high degree of fellowship by the hand
that signed the lease?

On his part, Mr. Duxbury Farley was equally successful. A company was
formed, the charter was obtained, and the golden stream began to flow
into the treasury; into it and out again in the raceway channels of
development. Thomas Jefferson stood aghast when an army of workmen swept
down on Paradise and began to change the very face of nature. But that
was only the beginning.

For a time Chiawassee Coal and Iron figured buoyantly in the market
quotations, and delegations of stock-holders, both present and
prospective, were personally conducted to the scene of activities by
enthusiastic Vice-President Farley. But when these had served their
purpose a thing happened. One fine morning it was whispered on 'Change
that Chiawassee iron would not Bessemer, and that Chiawassee coke had
been rejected by the Southern Association of Iron Smelters.

Followed a crash which was never very clearly understood by the
simple-hearted soldier iron-master, though it was merely a repetition of
a lesson well conned by the earlier investors in Southern coal and iron
fields. Caleb's craft was the making of iron; not the financing of
top-heavy corporations. So, when he was told that the company had
failed, and that he and Farley had been appointed receivers, he took it
as a financial matter, of course, somewhat beyond his ken, and went
about his daily task of supervision with a mind as undisturbed as it
would have been distraught had he known something of the subterranean
mechanism by which the failure and the receivership had been brought to
pass.

Why Mr. Duxbury Farley spared the iron-master in the freezing-out
process was an unsolved riddle to many. But there were reasons. For one,
there was the lease of the coal lands, renewable year by year--this was
Caleb's own honest provision inserted in the contract for the Major's
protection--and renewable only by the Major's friend. Further, a
practical man at the practical end of an industry is a sheer necessity;
and by contriving to have honest Caleb associated with himself in the
receivership, a fine color of uprightness was imparted to the promoter's
far-reaching plan of aggrandizement.

So, late