ean the next time you wheedle such inside information out, just
remember you've got a daddy."

"Now, Dad, don't be horrid and take away all my fun. Isn't it glorious!"

"Very," said Drake with a grimace. "I congratulate you, young scamps.
Your getting in and spreading the good news among the bosom friends--"
he glanced at Bojo, who flushed--"cost me a couple of hundred thousand
more than I intended to pay. I guess, young man, it'll be cheaper for me
to have you inside my office than out!"

"I didn't realize, sir--"

"No reason you should, but I want to tell you and your General Manager
so that you won't get any mistaken ideas of your Napoleonic talents,
that there was a moment ten days ago when the whole combination came
near a cropper, wherever you got your information." He stopped, looked
at his daughter severely, and said: "By the way, where _did_ you get
your information, young lady?"

Doris laughed mischievously, not at all deceived by his assumed anger.

"I have my own sources of information," she said, imitating his manner.

The father looked at her shrewdly, amused at the intrigue he divined.

"Well, this is my guess--"

But Doris, flinging herself, laughing, at him, closed his lips with her
pretty hand.

"She used Boskirk to help me," thought Bojo, perceiving her start of
fear and the shrewd smile on the face of the father.

He did not pursue the matter, but the conviction remained with him.

Despite his new-found resolutions he was surprised to find that the
obsession of the ticker still held him. With the announcement of the
completion of the Smelter merger, Indiana Smelter rose as high as
142-3/4, and the thought of these thousands which he might have had as
easily as not began to annoy him. He forgot that he had condemned
speculation in the contemplation of what might have been.

Looking back, it seemed to him that what he had made was ridiculously
small. If he had played the stock as other resolute spirits conducting
such campaigns for fortune, he should have thrown the rest of his
capital behind the venture once he was playing on velvet. He figured out
a dozen ways by which he might have achieved a master stroke and
trebled, even quadrupled, his profits, and the more his mind dwelt upon
it the more eager he became to embark into a fresh venture. Dan Drake
had hinted at taking him into his office. He began to long for the time
when the proposition would be again offered to him, to accept, to