LAGE STREET
GUARDED ON EITHER SIDE BY A FEMALE SNOW"]

Leverich shrugged his shoulders and turned his back as he bent over his
desk. Justin picked up his hat and went out, brushing, as he did so,
against a dark, pleasant-faced man who had been sitting in the next
room. Something in his face instantly conveyed to Justin the knowledge
that the conversation he had just been engaged in had grown louder than
the partition warranted. The next instant he recognized the man as a Mr.
Warren, of Rondell & Co. Both men turned to look back at each other, and
both bowed. The action had a certain definiteness in it, unwarranted by
the slightness of the meeting. The next moment Justin was in the
street.

[Illustration: "TO PUT HER YOUNG ARMS AROUND LOIS AND HOLD HER CLOSE
WITH ACHING PITY"]

The active clash of steel always roused the blood in him; he felt
actively stronger for combat. He was competently apportioning toward
Lewiston's note the different sums coming in this month. There were
large bills to be paid to the typometer's credit by several firms, one
of them Coneways'. Coneways represented the largest counted-in asset for
the entire year--it was the backbone of the establishment. If it went to
Lewiston, what would be left for the business? That could come next.
Lewiston was first. Leverich and Martin would exact every penny of their
principal after these intervening six months of the year were over.
Well, let them! Lewiston's note was what he had to think of now.

All business undertakings, no matter how wild, how precarious, to the
sense of the beholder, are started with confidence in their ultimate
success; it is the one trite, universal reason for starting--that faith
is the capital that all possess in common. Some of these doubtful
ventures, while never really succeeding, do not really fail at once.
They are always hard up, but they keep on, though gradually sinking
lower all the time. Others seem to exist by the continuance of that
first faith alone--a sheer optimism that keeps the courage alive and
keen enough to seize hold of the slightest driftwood of opportunity,
binding this flotsam into a raft that takes them triumphantly out on the
high tide. For all the long drag, the anxiety, the physical strain, the
harassment, failure in itself seemed as inherently impossible to Justin
as that he should be stricken blind or lose the use of his limbs. He
must think harder to find a way of accomplishment; that was all.

H