e someone stepped briskly from an inner room, and then a
man dashed impetuously across the general office, scattering books and
clerks in his eagerness, and crying, "Why, it's Mrs. McVeigh!" as he
caught her gaunt body in his arms.

"Johnny, me lad, is it yerself?" she gasped, after he had desisted from
his attempts to smother her.

Young John Keene held Nancy's hand within his own whilst he showed her
everything of interest in the office, for the mother loved it all
because it was her son's. The clerks were courteous and attentive, and
the girls fell in love with the quaint old lady on the spot.

"It's fer all the world like a school," she murmured in young John's
ear.

"And I'm the big boy," he answered, laughing.

A telegram searched the far corners of Mexico that afternoon, and at an
unheard-of place, with an unpronounceable name, it found Cornelius
McVeigh, the centre of a group of gentlemen. The party had just
emerged from the yawning mouth of a mine, and were resting in the
sunshine and expelling the foul air from their lungs, whilst the young
promoter of the western metropolis was explaining, from a sheet of
paper covered with figures, the cost of base metal to the producer.
The mine foreman suddenly interrupted his remarks with a yellow
envelope, which he thrust respectfully forward. "A telegram, sir," he
said, and withdrew. The array of men sighed gratefully at the respite,
and Cornelius McVeigh hastily scanned the message.

"Your mother in Chicago, much disappointed at your absence. When may
we expect you?" so it read.

The young man folded it carefully, put it into his pocket and continued
his discourse, but his words were losing their pointedness, and he was
occasionally absent-minded.

"It's dinner-time. I move an adjournment to the hotel," one of the
grey-haired capitalists suggested, and, with scant dignity for men of
such giant interests, they hurried to take advantage of the break in
the negotiations. Cornelius McVeigh did not go in to lunch, but
strolled the length of the verandah for a full hour, absorbed in
thought, then with characteristic energy he hastened to the little
telegraph room and wrote a reply to his home office:

"Will close a great deal if I stay. Cannot leave for a week at least.
Persuade mother to wait."

He then walked to the smoking apartments, where his late associates
were trying to forget business.

"I am ready, gentlemen," he observed, in his crisp, convin