pt. With all his many excellent
qualities Mr. Gwynne possessed certain fatal defects as a business man.
With him the supreme consideration was simply the getting rid of the
machines purchased by him as rapidly and in such large numbers as
possible. He cheerfully ignored the laws that governed the elemental
item of profit. Hence the relentless Nemesis that sooner or later
overtakes those who, whether ignorantly or maliciously, break laws, fell
upon the National Machine Company and upon those who had the misfortune
to be associated with it.

In the wreck of the business Mr. Gwynne's store, upon which the National
Machine Company had taken the precaution to secure a mortgage, was also
involved. The business went into the hands of a receiver and was bought
up at about fifty cents on the dollar by a man recently from western
Canada whose specialty was the handling of business wreckage. No
one after even a cursory glance at his face would suspect Mr. H. P.
Sleighter of deficiency in business qualities. The snap in the cold
grey eye, the firm lines in the long jaw, the thin lips pressed hard
together, all proclaimed the hard-headed, cold-hearted, iron-willed
man of business. Mr. Sleighter, moreover, had a remarkable instinct for
values, more especially for salvage values. It was this instinct that
led him to the purchase of the National Machine Company wreckage, which
included as well the Mapleton general store, with its assets in stock
and book debts.

Mr. Sleighter's methods with the easy-going debtors of the company in
Mapleton and the surrounding district were of such galvanic vigour
that even so practiced a procrastinator as Farmer Martin found himself
actually drawing money from his hoarded bank account to pay his store
debts--a thing unheard of in that community--and to meet overdue
payments upon the various implements which he had purchased from the
National Machine Company. It was not until after the money had been
drawn and actually paid that Mr. Martin came fully to realise the
extraordinary nature of his act.

"That there feller," he said, looking from the receipt in his hand
to the store door through which the form of Mr. Sleighter had just
vanished, "that there feller, he's too swift fer me. He ain't got any
innards to speak of; he'd steal the pants off a dog, he would."

The application of these same galvanically vigorous methods to Mr.
Gwynne's debtors produced surprising results. Mr. Sleighter made
the as