ned.

"I'm expecting the gentleman who is associated with us. If you'll excuse
me, I'll step out and see if he's arrived."

Duplay saw through the suggestion, but he had no objection to permitting
a consultation. He lit his cigar and waited while Sloyd was away. The
Major was in greater contentment with himself than he had been since he
recognized his defeat. Next to succeeding, it is perhaps the pleasantest
thing to make people regret that you have not succeeded. If he proved
his capacity Iver would regret what had happened more; possibly even
Janie would come to regret it. And he was glad to be using his brains
again. If they took the two thousand, if Iver got the Masters estate and
entire control of Blinkhampton for twenty-two thousand, Duplay would
have had a hand in a good bargain. He thought the Sloyds would yield.
"Be strong about it," Iver had said. "These young fellows have plenty of
enterprise, plenty of shrewdness, but they haven't got the grit to take
big chances. They'll catch at a certainty." Sloyd's manner had gone far
to bear out this opinion.

Sloyd returned, but, instead of coming in directly, he held the door and
allowed another to pass in front of him. Duplay jumped up with a
muttered exclamation. What the deuce was Harry Tristram doing there?
Harry advanced, holding out his hand.

"We neither of us thought we should meet in this way, Major Duplay? The
world's full of surprises. I've learnt that anyhow, and I dare say
you've known it a long while."

"You're in this business?" cried the Major, too astonished for any
preamble.

Harry nodded. "Let's get through it," he said. "Because it's very
simple. Sloyd and I have made up our minds exactly what we ought to
have."

It was the same manner that the Major remembered seeing by the
Pool--perhaps a trifle less aggressive, but making up for that by an
even increased self-confidence. Duplay had thought of his former
successful rival as a broken man. He was not that. He had never thought
of him as a speculator in building land. Seemingly that was what he had
become.

Harry sat down by the table, Sloyd standing by him and spreading out
before him a plan of Blinkhampton and the elevation of a row of
buildings.

"You ask us," Harry went on resentfully, almost accusingly, "to throw up
this thing just when we're ready to go ahead. Everything's in train; we
could begin work to-morrow."

"Come, come, where are you going to get the money?" interrupted D