lfe took one, Welkie took
one; they lit up.

"Ah-h--" Welkie woofed a great gob of smoke toward the veranda roof.
"Andie, you won't have to make any chemical analysis of the ashes of
these cigars to prove they're good. There is an artist--Hernando--and
more! I used to drop in to see him after a hot day. He would let me roll
out a cigar for myself in one of his precious moulds, and we'd sit and
talk of a heap of things. 'Some day, Hernando,' I'd say, 'along will
come some people and offer you such a price for your name that I reckon
you won't be able to resist.' 'No, no, my friend,' he would say. 'For my
nam' there shall be only my cigar. I shall mak' the good, fine
cigar--until I shall die. And for the sam'--one pr-r-ice.' How'd you
come to run into him, Andie?"

"I'd heard about him and you. I suspected, too, that he could verify a
few things about the Construction Company."

"And did he?"

"He did. And so they have been after you again?"

Welkie nodded.

"And offering more money than ever?"

Welkie nodded.

They smoked on. Again Balfe half turned in his chair. "I haven't seen
you, Greg, since the President sent for you from Washington that time.
How did you find him?"

"Fine. And I tell you, Andie, it heartened me to think that a man with
all he's got to tend to would stop to spend an hour with an obscure
engineer."

"You're not too obscure, Greg. What did he have to say?"

"Oh-h--said he wanted me to do a piece of special work, and he wanted me
because several people, in whose judgment he had confidence, said I was
the man for the job. You were one of 'em, Andie, he told me, and I'm
thanking you for it."

"I'm not sure that you ought to thank me, Greg. With that big company
you would be wealthy in a few years, but the trouble is, Greg, when I'm
on the job I'm as bad as you, only in a different and more selfish way.
I know only one road then, and once I set out I'd brush aside anything
for the one thing, Greg."

"Of course, when it's for the flag."

"Would you?"

"Could I do anything else?"

"The boy, too?"

"Where would he come into it, Andie?"

"You don't think that your feeling for the lad and your work could ever
clash?"

"How could they ever clash, Andie?"

"I don't know, Greg. I hope not." He relit his neglected cigar. "But
what else did the President have to say?"

"He said it was a bit of emergency work he wanted me for, that only the
remnant of a small appropriation was availabl