cal details and the general organization. As for
myself, after I have bought the land and placed the necessary funds to
the credit of the company I propose to keep out of the limelight. I will
be the heart of the undertaking; Murdoch will be the head, and you
are to be the hands, and I hope you two conspirators won't give me
palpitation. You think it a mistake to work without profits, but Murdoch
thinks it a sin. When I lay my plans before him I am quite prepared to
hear him insist upon calling in an alienist."

"It's YOUR money," Linder assented, laconically. "What are YOU going to
do?"

"I'm going to buy a half section of my own, and I'm going to start
myself on it on identically the same terms that I offer to the
shareholders in my company. I want to prove by my own experience that
it can be done, but I must keep away from the company. Human nature is
a clinging vine at best, and I don't want it clinging about me. You
will notice that my plan, unlike most communistic or socialist ventures,
relieves the individual of no atom of responsibility. I give him the
opportunity, but I put it up to him to make good with that opportunity.
I have not overlooked the fact that a man is a man, and never can be
made quite into a machine."

The two friends discussed at great length the details of the Big
Idea, and upon arrival in the West Linder lost no time in preparing
blue-prints and charts descriptive of the improvements to be made on the
land and the order in which the work was to be carried on. Grant bought
a tract suitable to his purpose, and the wheels of the machine which
was to blaze a path for the State were set in motion. When this had been
done Grant turned to the working out of his own individual experiment.

During the period in which these arrangements were being made it was
inevitable that Grant should have heard more or less of Transley. He had
not gone out of his way to seek information of the contractor, but it
rather had been forced upon him. Transley's name was frequently heard in
the offices of the business men with whom he had to do; it was
mentioned in local papers with the regularity peculiar to celebrities in
comparatively small centres. Transley, it appeared, had become something
of a power in the land. Backed by old Y.D.'s capital he had carried some
rather daring ventures through to success. He had seized the panicky
moments following the outbreak of the war to buy heavily on the wheat
and cattle mar