on panics,
and to grow strong and rich with every turn of the wheel. There is
only one stock expression in America for a man who is very able and
unscrupulous, and carries things successfully with a high hand--he is
Napoleonic. It needed only a few brilliant operations, madly reckless in
appearance but successful, to give Ault the newspaper sobriquet of the
Young Napoleon.

"Papa, what does he mean?" asked the eldest boy. "Jim Dustin says the
papers call you Napoleon."

"It means, my boy," said Ault, with a grim smile, "that I am devoted to
your mother, St. Helena."

"Don't say that, Murad," exclaimed his wife; "I'm far enough from a
saint, and your destiny isn't the Island."

"What's the Island, mamma?"

"It's a place people are sent to for their health."

"In a boat? Can I go?"

"You ask too many questions, Sinclair," said Mr. Ault; "it's time you
were off to school."

There seems to have been not the least suspicion in this household that
the head of it was a pirate.

It must be said that Mavick still looked upon Ault as an adventurer,
one of those erratic beings who appear from time to time in the
Street, upset everything, and then disappear. They had been associated
occasionally in small deals, and Ault had more than once appealed to
Mavick, as a great capitalist, with some promising scheme. They had,
indeed, co-operated in reorganizing a Western railway, but seemed to
have come out of the operation without increased confidence in each
other. What had occurred nobody knew, but thereafter there developed
a slight antagonism between the two operators. Ault went no more to
consult the elder man, and they had two or three little bouts, in which
Mavick did not get the best of it. This was not an unusual thing in
the Street. Mr. Ault never expressed his opinion of Mr. Mavick, but it
became more and more apparent that their interests were opposed. Some
one who knew both men, and said that the one was as cold and selfish as
a pike, and the other was a most unscrupulous dare-devil, believed that
Mavick had attempted some sort of a trick on Ault, and that it was
the kind of thing that the Spaniard (his complexion had given him this
nickname) never forgot.

It is not intended to enter into a defense of the local pool known
as the New York Stock Exchange. It needs none. Some regard it as a
necessary standpipe to promote and equalize distribution, others consult
it as a sort of Nilometer, to note the rise and fal