look them over."

"Where is Mr. Ford now?" asked the president crisply.

"He is not very far away; in fact, he is up-stairs in the sitting-room
of our suite with Aunt Hetty and the two Van Bruce ladies and Alicia.
Incidentally,--quite incidentally, you understand,--he is waiting to be
asked to help you out in that mining deal."

"Fetch him," was the curt command; and Mr. Colbrith sat down to wade
resignedly through the mass of delayed wire correspondence.

* * * * *

What remains of the story of the Pacific Southwestern is a chapter, as
yet unfinished, in the commercial history of the great and growing
empire of the West.

Of the rush to the Copah gold field; of the almost incredible celerity
with which a stretch of one hundred and forty-odd miles of construction
track was opened for the enormous traffic which was instantly poured in
upon it; of the rapid extension of the line to a far western outlet; of
the steady advance of P. S-W. shares to a goodly premium: these are
matters which are recorded in the newspaper files of the period.

For the typically American success of the Southwestern's dramatic upward
leap to the rank of a great railway system, President Colbrith has the
name and the fame. Yet here and there in the newspaper record there is
mention of one Stuart Ford, "our rising young railroad magnate," in the
unashamed phrase of the _Copah Megaphone_, first as the president's
assistant; later, as first vice-president and general manager of the
system, in the Chicago headquarters, with Mr. Richard Frisbie as his
second in command on the western lines, and Mr. Charles Edward Adair as
comptroller and chief of finances on the executive committee in New
York.

Ford's prophecies predicting the development of the new empire first
traversed by the Western Extension have long since found ample
fulfilment, as all the world knows. Copah gave the region its first and
largest advertisement; but other mining districts, with their imperative
beckonings to a food-producing population, have followed in due course.

It was early in June of the year marking the opening of the completed
Western Extension for through Pacific Coast traffic that a one-car
train, drawn by the smartest of passenger engines in charge of a
diminutive, red-headed Irishman, stormed bravely up the glistening steel
on the eastern approach to Plug Pass. The car was the rebuilt Nadia; and
in obedience to a shrill blast