r was now worth all of one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars.

"There's a line that I know of here in the city which could be made into
a splendidly paying property," continued Cowperwood, meditatively,
"if the right things could be done with it. Just like this North
Pennsylvania line, it isn't long enough. The territory it serves isn't
big enough. It ought to be extended; but if you and I could get it, it
might eventually be worked with this North Pennsylvania Company or some
other as one company. That would save officers and offices and a lot
of things. There is always money to be made out of a larger purchasing
power."

He paused and looked out the window of his handsome little hardwood
office, speculating upon the future. The window gave nowhere save into
a back yard behind another office building which had formerly been a
residence. Some grass grew feebly there. The red wall and old-fashioned
brick fence which divided it from the next lot reminded him somehow of
his old home in New Market Street, to which his Uncle Seneca used to
come as a Cuban trader followed by his black Portuguese servitor. He
could see him now as he sat here looking at the yard.

"Well," asked Stener, ambitiously, taking the bait, "why don't we get
hold of that--you and me? I suppose I could fix it so far as the money
is concerned. How much would it take?"

Cowperwood smiled inwardly again.

"I don't know exactly," he said, after a time. "I want to look into it
more carefully. The one trouble is that I'm carrying a good deal of the
city's money as it is. You see, I have that two hundred thousand dollars
against your city-loan deals. And this new scheme will take two or three
hundred thousand more. If that were out of the way--"

He was thinking of one of the inexplicable stock panics--those strange
American depressions which had so much to do with the temperament of the
people, and so little to do with the basic conditions of the country.
"If this North Pennsylvania deal were through and done with--"

He rubbed his chin and pulled at his handsome silky mustache.

"Don't ask me any more about it, George," he said, finally, as he saw
that the latter was beginning to think as to which line it might be.
"Don't say anything at all about it. I want to get my facts exactly
right, and then I'll talk to you. I think you and I can do this thing a
little later, when we get the North Pennsylvania scheme under way. I'm
so rushed just now I'm not