d oppressive even to the transient passer-by, disheartened
him curiously.

It was not that he was more provincial than he had to be; for that
matter, there is no provincialism so rampant as that of the thronging,
striving, self-sufficient city. But isolation in any sort is a thing to
be reckoned with. The two pioneering years in the Rockies had done their
work,--of narrowing, as well as of broadening,--and the plunge into the
chilling sea of the money-mad metropolis made him shiver and wish he
were out.

This feeling was really at the bottom of the late rising and the
leisurely breakfast, making him temporize where he had meant to be
prompt, energetic and vigorously aggressive. Having pocketed the young
woman's unsigned note, he glanced at his watch and decided that it was
still too early to go in search of President Colbrith.

"I don't suppose he'll be in his office for an hour yet," he mused
reflectively; "and anyway, I guess I'd better go over the papers again,
so I can be sure to speak my piece right end to. By Jove! I didn't
suppose a couple of thousand miles of easting would take the heart out
of things the way it does. If I didn't know better, I should think I'd
come here to float the biggest kind of a fake, instead of a life-boat
for the shipwrecked people in the Pacific Southwestern. It is beginning
to look that way in spite of all I can do."

Going once again over his carefully tabulated argument did not help
matters greatly. He was beginning to realize now how vastly, antipodally
different the New York point of view might be from his own. It came to
him with the benumbing effect of a blow that his own ambitions had
persistently looked beyond the mere money-making results of his scheme.
Also, that President Colbrith and his fellow-investors might very easily
refuse to consider any other phase of the revolutionary proposition he
was about to lay before them.

By ten o'clock postponement was no longer a tenable city of refuge: the
plunge had to be taken. Accordingly, he fared forth to present himself
at the Broadway address given in the Pacific Southwestern printed matter
as the New York headquarters of the company.

The number proved to be a ground floor, with the business office of the
eastern traffic representative in front, and three or four private
desk-rooms in the rear, one of them labeled "President" in inconspicuous
gilt lettering. Entering, with less assurance than if he had been the
humblest of