he was most familiar were too
advanced in age; the younger generation he did not know.

Virgil and several others of the early classic authors have commented
upon the surprising swiftness with which common rumor travels. If its
speed was provocative of comment in those bygone days, which lacked
most of the accelerating features now found on every hand, it should
certainly fare far faster at the present time. At any rate, no tidings
ever spread through the subliminal Chinese empire, warning of Magyar
hordes beyond the Wall, with greater celerity than the news of Mr.
Wintermuth's quest through the insurance world. The waves of it rolled
echoing from office to office, from special agent to special agent,
from city to city.

Like vultures out of an empty sky came the effects. Circumspect as Mr.
Wintermuth had been, keeping the object of his search as secret as
might be, it was not more than four days before he was driven ruefully
to reflect that he might just as well have put an advertisement in the
paper. Apparently everybody in the insurance world, including
especially the insurance editor of the paper in which he did not
advertise, knew he had decided to go outside his own office for a
managing underwriter; and apparently every person within reach had some
one--usually himself--to recommend for the position. Mr. Wintermuth
finally found it necessary to deny himself to aspiring applicants who
besieged his office, and went out on a still hunt in the lanes and
byways where he was less likely to meet people with axes to grind. It
was on one of these excursions, in a most natural and unpremeditated
manner, that he found himself confronted by Mr. Samuel Gunterson.

Mr. Gunterson had, it was true, been suggested as a possibility, but
through an outside source which Mr. Wintermuth felt sure was most
unlikely to have been stimulated to the suggestion by the person most
interested. The President was in a mood of despondency, incidental to
the painful discovery of how frail a tissue of truth most of the
recommendations of his applicants' supporters usually possessed. He
had spent four days investigating the records of men whose names,
enthusiastically presented to him, proved to be the only commendable
thing about them. Now, after this discouraging experience, he hailed
the prospect of independent selection with relief. It was with much
lightened depression that he recognized that Mr. Gunterson was
not--actively, at l