to the president did not contemplate your engaging in other
business."

Ford carefully suppressed the smile which the bit of industrial
martinetry provoked.

"As to that," he said placably, "I can assure you that the gold-digging
has been purely an investment on my part."

"But an investment which you should not have made," insisted the
president judicially. "If it had not tempted you to the breach of trust,
it was still inexpedient--most undeniably inexpedient. An official high
in the counsels of a great corporation should be like Caesar's
wife--above suspicion."

This time Ford's smile could not be wholly repressed. "I grant you it
was foolhardy, in the economic point of view," he confessed. "I took a
long chance of going ten thousand dollars to the bad. But mine-buying is
a disease--as contagious as the measles. Everybody in a mining country
takes a flyer, at least once. The experienced ones will tell you that
nobody is immune. Take your own case, now: if you don't keep a pretty
tight hold on your check-book, Mr. Colbrith, Cow Mountain will--"

The president frowned again; more portentously, this time.

"This levity is most reprehensible, Mr. Ford," he said stiffly. "I trust
I know my duty as the head of a great railway company too well to be
carried away on every baseless wave of excitement that fires the
imagination of the mining-camp I chance to be visiting." Mr. Colbrith
was not above mixing metaphor when the provocation was sufficiently
great.

"Baseless?" echoed Ford. "Surely you don't doubt ... Why, Mr. Colbrith,
this strike is the biggest thing that has happened in the mining world
since the discovery of the wedge-veins in Cripple Creek!"

The president shrugged his thin shoulders as one whose mission in life
is to be sturdily conservative after all the remainder of mankind has
struck hands with frenzied optimism.

"Nonsense!" he rasped contemptuously. "What happens? Two men come to
town with certain rich specimens which they claim to have taken out of
their prospect hole on Cow Mountain. That was at seven o'clock last
night, less than twenty-four hours ago, and some two or three thousand
lunatics have already rushed here in the belief--founded upon a mere
boast, it may be--that a great gold reef underlies Cow Mountain. By this
time to-morrow--"

Ford took him up promptly. "Yes; and by this time to-morrow the Denver
Mining Exchange will be howling itself hoarse over Copah mining shares,
like thos