th precocious insight he quickly learnt that money is made not by
those who go out upon the waters, but by those who stay on land and send
them hither and thither. He soon gave up the seafaring life and entered
a shipbroker's office. He starved himself in order to save money to
speculate in shipping reinsurance. An uncanny insight had guided him to
rush in when shrewdly prudent business men held aloof.

He had emphatically "made good." Each fresh success had given him new
confidence in himself and his judgment and his powers. He would allow
nothing to stand in his path. Scruples were to him the burden of fools.

A fair-haired giant in build, with inscrutable eyes and mouth set grim
and straight--such was Lars Larssen.

Though Matheson was in no way a small man, yet he seemed somehow dwarfed
when Larssen entered the room. The financier was a self-made master, but
the shipowner was a _born_ master of men--perhaps one's instinctive
contrast lay there. The one had the strength of finished steel, but the
other was rugged granite.

Lars Larssen said quietly: "Your letter brought me over to Paris. I
don't usually waste time in railway trains myself when I have men I can
pay to do it for me. So you can judge that I consider your letter
mighty important."

"I'm sorry if you have given yourself an unnecessary journey," returned
Matheson. "I had intended my letter to make my attitude clear to you."

"Then you missed fire."

"My attitude is simply this: I want to call the deal off."

"Not enough in it for you?" cut in Larssen.

"Not enough in it for the public."

The shipowner surveyed the other man through half-closed lids, weighing
up how far this declaration might be a genuine expression of opinion and
how far a mere excuse to cover some hidden motive.

"Talk it longer," he said.

For reply Matheson drew out a large-scale map of Canada from a drawer
and unfolded it with a decisive deliberation. He laid a finger on the
south-western corner of Hudson Bay. "Here is Fanning trading station,
the terminus of your five-hundred-mile railway. The land you run it over
is mostly lakes, rivers, and frozen swamps for three-quarters of the
year. The line is useless except for your own purpose--to carry wheat
for the Hudson Bay steamship route to England. You agree?"

"Agreed." Larssen was not the man to waste argument over minor points
when a vital matter was under discussion.

"Then the scheme centres on the practicability of