e half sorry for myself," he said, when they went to the
smoking-room to light their cigars. "It's no less than a piteous
misfortune when a fellow's father has beaten all the covers of
accomplishment for him."

Ford could laugh now without being bitter.

"The game isn't all corralled, even for you, Mr. Adair. There was
excellent good shooting for you in that directors' meeting this morning,
but you wouldn't take the trouble."

"That's the fact," was the easy-going rejoinder. "That is just what my
sister is always telling me--that I won't take the trouble. And yet I do
take the trouble to begin a lot of things; only they never seem worth
while after a few days' dip into them."

"Pick out bigger ones," suggested Ford. "My trouble is just the other
way about; I am always tackling things that are worlds too big for
me--just as I have this time."

"It isn't too big for you, Mr. Ford. It was too big for Colbrith,
Magnus, _et al_. And, besides, you're not going to give it up. You'll
drop off in Chicago, hunt up some meat-packer or other Croesus, and
land your new railroad independently of the P. S-W."

It was a measure of the sincerity of Ford's liking for his host when he
said: "That little shot of mine at your colleagues was merely a long
bluff. If my scheme can't be worked with the P. S-W., it can't well be
worked without it. We are lacking the two end-links in the chain--which
I could forge. But my two end-links without the middle one wouldn't
attract anybody."

It was quite late in the afternoon when they left the club, and Ford had
no more than time to check his luggage and get to his train. He wondered
a little when Adair went with him to the ferry, and was not ungrateful
for the hospitality which seemed to be directed toward a lightening of
the burden of failure. But Adair's word of leave-taking, flung across
the barrier when the chains of the landing-stage were rattling to their
rise, was singularly irrelevant.

"By the way, Mr. Ford; what time did you say your train would reach
Chicago?"

"At eight forty-five to-morrow evening," replied the beaten one; and
then the boat swung out of its slip and the retreat without honor was
begun.

VII

HAMMER AND TONGS

It was raining dismally the evening of the following day when Ford saw
from his Pullman window the dull sky-glow of the metropolis of the
Middle West. It had been a dispiriting day throughout. When a man has
flung himself at his best into a