is
now so agreeably proven, do nothing by halves and are only too glad to
distribute all profits as soon as accrued. The stock has already doubled
in price and we predict will reach par in the near future."

And when Jess Hutton received by mail a check for one hundred dollars
as his share of the dividend upon the par value of five hundred shares
and the parson one for ten, Rockhaven began to get excited, and all who
had a dollar to invest made haste to call upon Winn. Captain Doty bought
one hundred shares, Captain Moore, uncle to David the irrepressible, the
same, a few others lesser amounts, and to cap the climax, poor
hard-working Mrs. Moore, Winn's landlady, came to him.

"I've got a little money laid away in the savin's bank ashore," she
said, "an' it's only drawin' four cents a dollar, which ain't much. If
you thinks it's safe mebbe I'd best take some out an' buy some o' this
stock. They all tell me it's payin' and like to go up."

And that night, in the seclusion of his own room, as Winn Hardy thought
matters over, and realized how this speculative excitement was starting
on Rockhaven, just a faint suspicion that the golden apple might be
rotten at the core came to him. As was his way when he wanted to think
and think hard, he at once betook himself out of sight and sound of even
that quiet village, and hied away to the top of Norse Hill. Here he lit
a cigar and planted himself beside the strange structure there, the
history of which no one knew.

And how solemn and silent the still summer evening seemed, and how like
eternity the boundless ocean faintly visible in the starlight. Only its
low murmur at the foot of the cliff and just a faint breeze redolent of
its salty zest reached him. And of Weston & Hill and this new outcome?

He had worked and talked to this end; he had hoped for it, striving to
bring it about, and now that the quarry was each day a busy hive of
workers, the third vessel load of quarried stone nearly all on board and
ready to ship, the entire island agog over this new industry, and not
only willing but anxious to invest their hard-earned savings in
Rockhaven stock, and a prosperous outcome to his ambition in sight, Winn
hesitated.

And the more he ground the grist of Weston & Hill's scheme in his mind
there beside the old stone tower, the less he liked it and the deeper
the germ of suspicion took root. And the cause of it all was the two per
cent dividend!

Winn Hardy, though a coun