nd Crittenton Madeira, that agent with whom we had the
correspondence. I walked in upon Madeira with a pretty little notion
that you and I had had something to do with the projection of a plan
for developing and mining the Tigmores; I could have sworn that we
originated the idea of hypothecating my heirship to the Canaan Tigmores;
I remembered that in New York the fact that I would inherit from
Grierson seemed to make my association with any enterprise for the
development of the Tigmores of vital importance. I had not forgotten
that that was our argument, and I was nursing a feeling that I was
fairly necessary to any permanency of operations in the Tigmores. I am
all straightened out on that score now, thanks to Madeira. The situation
that I find here is this: Madeira has calmly taken over our ideas, and
his plans of organisation are about complete. He is qualified to act for
Grierson absolutely. The company that he will organise is to be known as
The Canaan Mining and Development Company. He appreciates stingily that
it may be some advantage to have me associated with the company, for the
purpose of imparting a feeling of confidence to investors, but he does
not begin to attach the importance to me that you and I did. He will let
me in if I want to come in, but it is quite evident that he can get
along without me, and yet more evident that if he takes me in, I must
resign myself to his dictation,--dictating is his strong suit. To the
gentleman who expected to be the president of the Steering-Grierson
Company, that is not a pleasant programme; yet, my dear Carington, my
circumstances are so precarious that I might attempt to fill it, if I
did not see through Madeira's lack of principle, negatively
speaking,--rascality, positively speaking. Now, I may have winked one
eye occasionally during my business career, but I have never yet been
able to shut both at once. It may be taste and it may be morals.
Heretofore I have taken business too casually really to know how I am
equipped for it. I have never before really met myself, spoken to
myself, as I hustled through the few commercial hours of each day of my
life. But out here business has become a thing of wider import on the
instant, and already I am face to face with something stiff and hard on
the inside of me that promises not to be very malleable under Madeira's
hands. Madeira's hands, my dear boy, are pot-black. The plan that with
us was a fair and square enterprise has