granite. When hot times came, they boiled up in a mountain to
buttress the world.

Churm's blank check seemed to wave in the air like an oriflamme of
victory. Its payee might come from Botany Bay; he might wear his beard to
his knees, and his belt stuck full of howitzers and boomerangs; he might
have been repeatedly hung by Vigilance Committees, and as often cut down
and revived by galvanism; but brandishing that check, good for anything
less than a million, every Director in Wall Street was his slave, his
friend, and his brother.

"Let us vote Mr. Wade in by acclamation," cried the Directors.

"But, gentlemen," Churm interposed, "if I give him my blank check, he must
have _carte blanche_, and no one to interfere in his management."

Every Director, from President Brummage down, drew a long face at this
condition.

It was one of their great privileges to potter in the Dunderbunk affairs
and propose ludicrous impossibilities.

"Just as you please," Churm continued. "I name a competent man, a
gentleman and fine fellow. I back him with all the cash he wants. But he
must have his own way. Now take him, or leave him!"

Such despotic talk had never been heard before in that Directors' Room.
They relucted a moment. But they thought of their togas of advertisements
in danger. The blank check shook its blandishments before their eyes.

"We take him," they said, and Richard Wade was the new Superintendent
unanimously.

"He shall be at Dunderbunk to take hold to-morrow morning," said Churm,
and went off to notify him.

Upon this, Consternation sailed out of the hearts of Brummage and
associates.

They lunched with good appetites over the green table, and the President
confidently remarked,--

"I don't believe there is going much of a crisis, after all."

CHAPTER II.

BARRACKS FOR THE HERO.

Wade packed his kit, and took the Hudson-River train for Dunderbunk the
same afternoon.

He swallowed his dust, he gasped for his fresh air, he wept over his
cinders, he refused his "lozengers," he was admired by all the pretty
girls and detested by all the puny men in the train, and in good time got
down at his station.

He stopped on the platform to survey the land--and water-privileges of his
new abode.

"The June sunshine is unequalled," he soliloquized, "the river is
splendid, the hills are pretty, and the Highlands, north, respectable; but
the village has gone to seed. Place and people look lazy, vicious, a