Yes!" he said, glancing swiftly up again, with a gleam of friendly
vindication in his eyes. "I know he will."

"But I hear hard things said of him," I persisted. "Reports have
lately come to me as to some rather close, not to say sharp, bargains
of his. He is successful; perhaps he is changing."

For the first time I saw Silverthorn angry.

"Never say a word of that sort to me again!" he cried, with a demeanor
bordering on violence.

I was a little piqued, and inquired:

"Well, how do you get on toward being in a position to pay him?"

But I regretted my thrust. Silverthorn's face fell, and he could make
no reply.

"Is there no prospect of success with those machines you were talking
of last year?" I asked more kindly.

"No," said he, sadly. "I'm afraid not. I shall never succeed. It all
depends on Vibbard, now. I cannot even marry, unless he gets enough to
give me a start."

I left him with a dreary misgiving in my heart. What an unhappy
outcome of their compact was this!

Meanwhile, Vibbard was thriving. After a brief sojourn with his
father, who was a well-to-do hardware merchant in his own small inland
city, he went to Virginia and began sheep-farming. In two years he had
gained enough to find it feasible to return to New York, where he took
up the business of a note-broker. People who knew him prophesied that
he would prove too slow to be a successful man in early life; and, in
fact, as he did not look like a quick man, he was a long time in
gaining the reputation of one. But his sagacious instincts moved all
the more effectively for being masked, and he made some astonishing
strokes. It began to seem as if other men around him who lost, were
controlled by some deadly attraction which forced them to throw their
success under Vibbard's feet. His car rolled on over them. Everything
yielded him a pecuniary return.

As he was approaching his thirtieth birthday, he found himself worth a
little over thirty thousand dollars--after deducting expenses, bad
claims, and a large sum repaid to his father for the cost of his
college course. He had been only six years in accumulating it. But how
endlessly prolonged had those six years been for Silverthorn! When
three of them had passed, he declared his love to Ida Winwood, though
in such a way that she need neither refuse nor accept him at once;
and a _quasi_ engagement was made between them, having in view a
probable share in Vibbard's fortunes. Once,--perhaps more