,
asking Jake a sharp question now and then, and afterwards sent him away.

"You can put up the papers now," he said. "We'll go out on the veranda.
It's cooler there."

He dropped into a canvas chair, for the air was stagnant and enervating,
and looked down at the clustering lights beside the sea for a time. Then
he said abruptly: "Jake seems to know his business. You have taught him
well."

"He learned most himself," Dick answered modestly.

"Well," said Fuller with some dryness, "that's the best plan, but you put
him on the right track and kept him there; I guess I know my son. Has he
made trouble for you in other ways?"

"None worth mentioning."

Fuller gave him a keen glance and then indicated the lights of the town.

"That's the danger-spot. Does he go down there often?"

"No. I make it as difficult as possible, but can't stop him altogether."

Fuller nodded. "I guess you used some tact, because he likes you and
you'd certainly have had trouble if you'd snubbed him up too hard.
Anyway, I'm glad to acknowledge that you have put me in your debt. You
can see how I was fixed. Bethune's not the man to guide a headstrong lad,
and Stuyvesant's his boss. If he'd used any official pressure, Jake would
have kicked. That's why I wanted a steady partner for him who had no
actual authority."

"In a sense, you ran some risk in choosing me."

"I don't know that I chose you, to begin with," Fuller answered with a
twinkle. "I imagine my daughter made me think as I did, but I'm willing
to state that her judgment was good. We'll let that go. You have seen
Jake at his work; do you think he'll make an engineer?"

"Yes," said Dick, and then recognizing friendship's claim, added bluntly:
"But he'll make a better artist. He has the gift."

"Well," said Fuller, in a thoughtful tone, "we'll talk of it again. In
the meantime, he's learning how big jobs are done and dollars are earned,
and that's a liberal education. However, I've a proposition here I'd like
your opinion of."

Dick's heart beat as he read the document his employer handed him. It was
a formal agreement by which he engaged his services to Fuller until the
irrigation work was completed, in return for a salary that he thought
remarkably good.

"It's much more than I had any reason to expect," he said with some
awkwardness. "In fact, although I don't know that I have been of much
help to Jake, I'd sooner you didn't take this way of repaying me. One
would prefer