one of them. Bu'st up! I'm sorry for
him because I thought him a biggish man;--but what he's done'll just be
the making of us over there. Will you get out of it, or will you come
back to Frisco with me?'

In answer to this Paul asserted most strenuously that he would not
return to San Francisco, and, perhaps too ingenuously, gave his
partner to understand that he was altogether sick of the great
railway, and would under no circumstances have anything more to do
with it. Fisker shrugged his shoulders, and was not displeased at the
proposed rupture. He was prepared to deal fairly,--nay, generously,--by
his partner, having recognized the wisdom of that great commercial
rule which teaches us that honour should prevail among associates of a
certain class; but he had fully convinced himself that Paul Montague
was not a fit partner for Hamilton K. Fisker. Fisker was not only
unscrupulous himself, but he had a thorough contempt for scruples in
others. According to his theory of life, nine hundred and ninety-nine
men were obscure because of their scruples, whilst the thousandth man
predominated and cropped up into the splendour of commercial wealth
because he was free from such bondage. He had his own theories, too,
as to commercial honesty. That which he had promised to do he would
do, if it was within his power. He was anxious that his bond should be
good, and his word equally so. But the work of robbing mankind in
gross by magnificently false representations, was not only the duty,
but also the delight and the ambition of his life. How could a man so
great endure a partnership with one so small as Paul Montague? 'And
now what about Winifred Hurtle?' asked Fisker.

'What makes you ask? She's in London.'

'Oh yes, I know she's in London, and Hurdle's at Frisco, swearing that
he'll come after her. He would, only he hasn't got the dollars.'

'He's not dead then?' muttered Paul.

'Dead!--no, nor likely to die. She'll have a bad time of it with him
yet.'

'But she divorced him.'

'She got a Kansas lawyer to say so, and he's got a Frisco lawyer to
say that there's nothing of the kind. She hasn't played her game badly
neither, for she's had the handling of her own money, and has put it
so that he can't get hold of a dollar. Even if it suited other ways,
you know, I wouldn't marry her myself till I saw my way clearer out of
the wood.'

'I'm not thinking of marrying her,--if you mean that.'

'There was a talk about it in F