sual assurance.

"Oh, yes," he replied thoughtfully. "I've planned--sure. But I guess
I'm in the dark a bit. It's going to cost a deal. It's not going to be
easy. You were ready to buy. It was not necessarily to be the
Skandinavia who bought. Well, are you--going to vote the credit for this
fight?" He smiled uncertainly. "And to what extent?"

"The limit. Go on."

Peterman nodded.

"There's no commercial enterprise that can stand idleness. His work must
stop. His--"

"That is the A.B.C. of it."

There was sharp impatience in the financier's biting tone.

"Just so. It is the A.B.C. of it."

Hellbeam set back in his chair. He clasped his hands across his stomach.

"I will tell you," he said, a wicked smile lighting his deep-set eyes,
his cheeks rounding themselves in his satisfaction. "His work will stop.
His mill is far away. There is no protection from attack except that
which he can set up himself. He is going away. He will have eighteen
hundred miles of water between him and his mill. It should be easy with
a good plan and all the money. Listen.

"His work must stop. How? There are ways. His mill may burn. His forests
may burn. His men may revolt. They may refuse to work for him. All, or
any of these things may serve. There are men at all times ready to carry
out these things. You can tell them, or you need not, the way they must
act." He shook his head. "You say to them his work must stop; and you
pay them more than he can pay them. So his work will stop. That is so?
Yes? Very well. There is ha'f a million dollars that will pay for his
work to stop. I say that."

Peterman was startled. He had not been prepared for so sweeping a
proposal. He had understood that the man had been prepared to stand at
almost nothing in his desire to achieve some end, the nature of which
still remained somewhat obscure to him. For all his own lack of scruple
in his dealings with those who offended, the calm, fiendish purpose of
this man shocked him not a little.

He took the chair usually occupied by his visitors.

"You will pay ha'f a million dollars for this thing?" he demanded, to
re-assure himself.

Self-satisfaction looked out of the eyes of the man behind the desk.

"More--if necessary."

"By God! You must hate this boy, Sternford."

Peterman's feelings had broken from under his control.

"Sternford? Psha! It is not Sternford. No."

The smile had gone from Hellbeam's eyes. They were fiercely burning.
They we