position without
some sort of qualification; he never had done so, and there seemed no
valid reason to suppose that he ever would.

"And how is Schuyler coming along?" inquired the General Agent, with
decided deference to the conventionalities of such interviews.

"Oh, so so," replied the man from Maine. "There ain't been much change
up there since you was there. That is, not what you'd really call a
change. How's things with you? The company still pays dividends, I
see."

Mr. Howell was the owner of four shares of the company's stock.

"Doing all right," Smith responded. "The Guardian believes in making
haste slowly, you know; we don't go ahead very fast, but we keep
plugging along. Mr. Wintermuth feels it's always best to be on the
safe side. Occasionally it's discouraging when we see some competitor
build up an income in three or four years as big as ours that it's
taken three or four generations to establish, but when we read some
morning that our enterprising friends have had to reinsure their
liability with some stronger concern and retire from business because
their losses have caught up to them, we don't feel quite so badly.
Personally I think we could travel a little faster, and I'd like to see
our premiums twice what they are now. And I hope you'll double them
this year in Schuyler, anyway."

"Maybe so, but you never can tell. Business is liable to slack up just
when you think it's going along all right. And there ain't been any
new building in Schuyler of any account for two years back but Dodge's
feed mill and the new Union School. You've got a line on both of them."

At this point their conversation was interrupted because of the
departure of the persistent gentleman, who had been closeted with Mr.
Wintermuth. As the door closed on him, Jimmy disappeared around the
corner and thrust his head and fore quarters, so to speak, into
O'Connor's open doorway.

"Th' President's at liberty now," he announced.

Without replying, the Vice-President picked up the _Journal of
Commerce_ and the daily report with the yellow telegram affixed to it,
and strode over, past Smith's desk, to the office of his chief.

"Can you come out and look at the map a minute, sir?" he asked
respectfully.

"Certainly. What is it? A loss?" replied Mr. Wintermuth, noticing the
telegraph slip as he rose from his chair and followed O'Connor toward
the map counter.

"Yes," said the Vice-president. He was passing the