een foolish--yes, I agreed
that it would have been foolish. He had made $10,000 on the sale, and
that would go toward paying off what he had borrowed for the original
purchase. Meanwhile he could be looking about for another site.

Later in the winter he told me it was a bad time to look. His position
in the real-estate business enabled him to follow the trend of the
market, and that trend was obstinately upward. But of course there
would be a reaction--and he was keeping his eyes open.

As the resuscitated Academy scheme once more fell into abeyance, I saw
Halidon less and less frequently; and we had not met for several
months, when one day of June, my morning paper startled me with the
announcement that the President had appointed Edward Halidon of New
York to be Civil Commissioner of our newly acquired Eastern possession,
the Manana Islands. "The unhealthy climate of the islands, and the
defective sanitation of the towns, make it necessary that vigorous
measures should be taken to protect the health of the American citizens
established there, and it is believed that Mr. Halidon's large
experience of Eastern life and well-known energy of character--" I read
the paragraph twice; then I dropped the paper, and projected myself
through the subway to Halidon's office. But he was not there; he had
not been there for a month. One of the clerks believed he was in
Washington.

"It's true, then!" I said to myself. "But Mrs. Halidon in the
Mananas--?"

A day or two later Ned appeared in my office. He looked better than
when we had last met, and there was a determined line about his lips.

"My wife? Heaven forbid! You don't suppose I should think of taking
her? But the job is a tremendously interesting one, and it's the kind
of work I believe I can do--the only kind," he added, smiling rather
ruefully.

"But my dear Ned--"

He faced me with a look of quiet resolution. "I think I've been through
all the _buts_. It's an infernal climate, of course, but then I am used
to the East--I know what precautions to take. And it would be a big
thing to clean up that Augean stable."

"But consider your wife and children--"

He met this with deliberation. "I _have_ considered my children--that's
the point. I don't want them to be able to say, when they look back:
'He was content to go on living on that money--'"

"My dear Ned--"

"That's the one thing they _shan't_ say of me," he pressed on
vehemently. "I've tried other ways--bu