nt--if battle front it
were. So he went off to interview the vigilant and ambitious Ferguson;
and for four days the home office saw him no more.

In the many years during which the Guardian had conducted its sane and
conservative business life, it had gathered into its grasp a great many
desirable adjuncts and aids to the smooth and proper operation of a
first-class fire insurance company. Its agency plant, while not one of
the largest, was second to none in the character and ability of the
agents themselves; its force of office and field men was adequate; even
its stationery was simple and dignified and well adapted to the
ordinary uses of the management.

Perhaps at no time had Mr. Wintermuth's good fortune served him better
than when he secured the Guardian's principal reinsurance treaty.
Nearly every large company has contracts with one or more reinsurance
companies, usually foreign, and whenever an agent writes a policy for a
greater amount than his company thinks it prudent to hazard on the risk
in question, it cedes to one or more of these reinsurers such a
proportion of the risk as it feels disinclined to retain, paying to the
reinsurers an equal proportion of the original premium. The larger the
policies a company is willing to write, the higher the esteem in which
it is held by its agents, as a rule; and the Guardian had always,
thanks to the excellent reinsurance facilities it enjoyed, been able to
take care of very liberal lines on all acceptable classes of business.
Moreover, since the treaty company paid the Guardian for its proportion
of the premium a higher rate of commission than the Guardian paid the
agent who wrote the risk, the transaction was profitable to the
Guardian. The reinsurance company could afford to pay the higher
commission, because it had no expensive agency plant to maintain, it
did not need conspicuous offices, it employed no field men or
inspectors, and in fact, except for the inevitable losses, this
commission paid for the business was its only important expense.

Mr. Wintermuth had, in the mist of years past, discovered on one of his
trips abroad a reinsurance company rejoicing in the name of the
Karlsruhe Feuer Rueckversicherungs Gesellschaft, or more briefly, the
Karlsruhe Reinsurance Company. With the managing director of this
worthy institution he had taken the unspeakable waters at an almost
obsolete German spa, and although the waters did him no good, the
reinsurance t