ound her as they walked, and seating himself in his
chair by his desk in front of the fire, he tried to draw Margaret to sit
on his knee.

"No; I'll sit here, so that I can see you," she said, composed and
unyielding.

He took out his pocket-book, selected a slip of paper, and laid it on the
table before him. "There, that is a check for seven hundred dollars. I
looked in the books. That is the interest for a year on the Fletcher
bonds. Might as well make it an even year; it will be that soon."

"Do you mean to say--" asked Margaret, leaning forward.

"Yes; to brighten up the Christmas up there a little."

"--that you are going to send that to Mrs. Fletcher?" Margaret had
risen.

"Oh, no; that wouldn't do. I cannot send it, nor know anything about it.
It would raise the--well, it would--if the other bondholders knew
anything about it. But you can change that for your check, and nobody the
wiser."

"Oh, Rodney!" She was on his knee now. He was good, after all. Her head
was on his shoulder, and she was crying a little. "I've been so unhappy,
so unhappy, all day! And I can send that?" She sprang up. "I'll do it
this minute--I'll run and get my check-book!" But before she reached the
door she turned back, and came and stood by him and kissed him again and
again, and tumbled up his hair, and looked at him. There is, after all,
nothing in the world like a woman.

"Time enough in the morning," said Henderson, detaining her. "I want to
tell you all about it."

What he told her was, in fact, the case as it had been presented by his
lawyers, and it seemed a very large, a constitutional, kind of case. "Of
course," he said, "in the rivalry and competition of business somebody
must go to the wall, and in a great scheme of development and
reorganization of the transportation of a region as big as an empire some
individual interests will suffer. You can't help these changes. I'm sorry
for some of them--very sorry; but nothing would ever be done if we waited
to consider every little interest. And that the men who create these
great works, and organize these schemes for the benefit of the whole
public, shouldn't make anything by their superior enterprise and courage
is all nonsense. The world is not made that way."

The explanation, I am bound to say, was one that half the world considers
valid; it was one that squeezed through the courts. And when it was done,
and the whole thing had blown over, who cared? There were some
b