free site, and Elgin
offered you a free site and a dam for your water power. You took the
biggest subsidy an' came here,' I said."

Lorne laughed: "What did he say to that?"

"Hadn't a word. 'I guess it's up to me,' he said. Then he turned round
and came back. 'Hold on, Williams; he said. 'You know so much already
about my boiler works, it wouldn't be much trouble for you to write out
an account of them from the beginning, would it? Working in the last
quarter of a century of the town's progress, you know, and all that.
Come round to the office tomorrow, and I'll give you some pointers.' And
he fixed up a two-column ad right away. He was afraid I'd round on him,
I suppose, if I caught him saying anything more about the immorality of
subsidies."

"He won't say anything more."

"Probably not. Milburn hasn't got much of a political conscience, but
he's got a sense of what's silly. Well, now, I expect you want all the
time there is."

Mr Williams removed himself from the edge of the table, which was strewn
with maps and bluebooks, printed official, and typewritten demi-official
papers.

"Give 'em a notion of those Assiniboian wheat acres, my boy, and the
ranch country we've got; tell 'em about the future of quick passage and
cold storage. Get 'em a little ashamed to have made so many fortunes for
Yankee beef combines; persuade 'em the cheapest market has a funny way
of getting the dearest price in the end. Give it 'em, Lorne, hot and
cold and fricasseed. The Express will back you up."

He slapped his young friend's shoulder, who seemed occupied with
matters that prevented his at once feeling the value of this assurance.
"Bye-bye," said Mr Williams. "See you again before you start."

"Oh, of course!" Lorne replied. "I'll--I'll come round. By the
way, Williams, Mr Milburn didn't say anything--anything about me in
connection with this business? Didn't mention, I suppose, what he
thought about my going?"

"Not a word, my boy! He was away up in abstract principles; he generally
is. Bye-bye."

"It's gone to his head a little bit--only natural," Horace reflected as
he went down the stairs. "He's probably just feeding on what folks think
of it. As if it mattered a pin's head what Octavius Milburn thinks or
don't think!"

Lorne, however, left alone with his customs returns and his immigration
reports, sat still, attaching a weight quite out of comparison with a
pin's head to Mr Milburn's opinion. He turned it over an