e man, and sending for a full detailed
report by the commercial agency besides. Even then we occasionally get
caught with a crook, but not often. The Guardian is very careful; if
all other companies were equally so, there would be fewer firebugs in
business."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, many companies rely wholly on their agents; they don't send for
these special reports, and the result is that they get caught for a
dishonest loss, and the crook who is smart enough to make the agent
think he is straight gets away with it. Thus encouraging the
impostors."

"But are not the commercial agency men fooled too?"

"Oh, yes, they're only human; but at least you have two sources of
information to draw on--and three, if the man has a fire record. By
the time we've finished we are apt to know a good deal about our
policyholder, here at the home office, and sometimes we learn very
strange things--sometimes humorous and sometimes quite the reverse."

He stopped, and Miss Maitland, seeing his pause, hesitated with the
question she had been about to put.

"I wonder if you'd care to hear about a case that came to my notice
yesterday," he said.

"I would very much," the girl replied.

"You know these commercial agency reports are by no means what I should
term models of English prose style. They are usually about as dull and
dry documents as any I know in the manner of their presentation of
facts. Their authors have about as much need for imagination as the
gentlemen who compile city directories and telephone books; beside them
articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica are yellow journalism. All
the same, they deal with facts, and facts can be more tragic than any
romantic fiction ever produced. This case I speak of was simply the
story of a harness maker who lived in Robbinsville, a small town up in
the center of New York State. A little while ago our local agent wrote
a policy on this man's stock, and because he had no rating showing his
financial responsibility, the underwriter who passes on New York State
business sent for a detailed report, which after some delay came to us
yesterday."

Again he paused, and there was silence in the little office until he
resumed.

"The rating said--and the manner of it showed that the reporter felt
the poignancy of his words--that the harness maker was bankrupt. For
nearly fifty years he had kept a harness shop in that same little town,
and competition by a younger, more aggr