We don't need outsiders."

He was so vehement that she regarded him questioningly. "Don't you like
him any more?" she inquired, with a little dubious shake of her head.

"I don't like"--Madeira got up and walked back and forth under the
crab-apple tree--"I don't like for a man without any practical knowledge
or experience to get a lot of ideas about a thing and bring them to a
field and try to push other chaps out, other chaps who are already in
the field."

"Yes, but----" It occurred to her that she was defending Steering--"but
if he brings the ideas, he ought to have the credit for originating the
ideas, oughtn't he?"

"No! No!" Madeira's voice rang up, urgent, strident; he did not seem
conscious that he was talking to her; he seemed rather to be having
something out with himself. The strain of the past weeks had come back
to his face. "Plenty of people before this Steering have thought of ore
in the Canaan Tigmores. Look at old Grierson himself! Originate the
idea! Grierson had the idea before Steering was born! We can get ideas
in this country, and work 'em out, too, without any help from
outsiders."

"Mr. Steering is not exactly an outsider, is he?"

"Yes, he is, too. He hasn't any more claim to this land now than you
have; it isn't any more his business what's done here during Grierson's
lifetime than it's Rockefeller's business. Not a bit. Let Steering wait
till the land is his."

"Well,"--she was troubled,--"in the meantime, what is old Grierson going
to do?"

Madeira seemed to be trying to quiet himself. He went down to the garden
fence and looked at the oak forest on the other side of the Di, puckered
up his mouth, as though to whistle, but stopped short of it, and came
sauntering back toward his daughter. "He is going to do what I tell him
to do, Honey," he made answer. "And I'm telling him to put the Canaan
Mining and Development Company into the Tigmores after zinc."

"I should think, though," she said then, slowly, "that even if the
matter is in your hands now, it would be to your ultimate advantage to
have Mr. Steering in with you. He is the next owner, and, if old
Grierson should die, whatever work you have done on the Tigmores would
go for nothing. I should think it would be almost essential for you and
Mr. Steering to be together."

He let his chair down angrily. "There isn't a big enough scheme in the
universe to accommodate Steering and me together! He is a blamed idiot,"
he said dogged