rs what a safe investment Rockhavens were, and how sure
to advance.

"We have not sold much stock and do not care to," he said, "we know a
good thing when we see it, and in this quarry we have a certain
money-maker. It costs us a mere nothing to quarry the stone, the market
absorbs all our product at a good price, and the ledge we own is
limitless. Then we have an excellent manager in whom the firm trusts
implicitly."

He always used "we" in speaking of the stock, that pronoun carrying a
certain assurance, as he well knew, for Simmons, who had grown old and
gray on the street, was a shrewd money-maker and well known to be worth
a million or more.

But while Weston was happy in his prospective success, Hill was not. He
was too greedy, and, narrow-minded as he was, could not wait content
until the Rockhaven plum was ripe. He wanted to grasp it at once, even
to ruin its fruition entirely. He railed and groaned whenever a dollar
was put out, and had from the start. In his narrow vision it was so much
thrown away. Every item in the press that called for outlay, the use of
the thousands held by Simmons to manipulate the market, and especially
the hundred or more that each week had to be sent to the island, each
and all added to Hill's misery. Weston, the liberal rascal, had for a
long time felt disgusted with his partner's miserly instincts; now he
positively hated him and longed for the day when he could deal him a
crushing blow. Both were unscrupulous schemers and thieves at heart, but
of the two Hill was the worse. Not only did Weston come to hate Hill
more and more each day, but he grew tired of the sight of his pinched
and hypocritical face, his sunken eyes and clammy handshake--for shake
hands with him occasionally he must. Then Hill was so unlike Weston in
other ways it added to the feeling of disgust; he never used tobacco or
drank, and held up his hands in holy horror at any lapse from the code
of morality, and worse than that, if Weston let slip any word of
profanity, as he occasionally did, Hill exclaimed against it.

To have one's small vices made a daily text for short sermons is
unpleasant, even to the best of us.

But while Weston's hate and disgust grew apace, no hint of it leaked
out, and since he was the master spirit in the Rockhaven Granite Company
and in that scheme held the reins, it moved on to culmination,
unaffected by Hill's whining.

CHAPTER XXV

A SUMMER DAY

The life of suspense