ob
like yours. I still want in. Will you take me as a silent partner,
Raymer? I'm not making it a condition, mind you: come here any time
after ten o'clock to-morrow, and you'll find the money waiting for you.
But I do hope you won't turn me down."

Raymer was gripping the arms of his chair again, but this time they were
not unpleasantly electrified.

"If I had only myself to consider, I shouldn't keep you waiting a
second," he returned, heartily. "But it may take a little time to
persuade my mother and sister. If they could only know you"--then,
forgetting the crossed wire and his late overhearings--"why can't you
come out to dinner with me to-night?"

"For the only reason that would make me refuse; I have a previous
bidding. But I'll be glad to go some other day. There is no hurry about
this business matter; take all the time you need--after you have made
Mr. Grierson take his claws out of you."

Raymer had filled the borrowed pipe again and was pulling at it
reflectively. "About this partnership; what would be your notion?" he
asked.

"The simplest way is always the best. Increase your capital stock and
let me in for as much as my ninety thousand dollars will buy," said the
easily satisfied investor. "We'll let it go at that until you've had
time to think it over, and talk it over with your mother and sister."

The iron-founder got up and reached for his hat.

"You are certainly the friend in need, Griswold, if ever there was one,"
he said, gripping the hand of leave-taking as if he would crack the
bones in it. "But there is one thing I'm going to ask you, and you
mustn't take offense: this ninety thousand; could you afford to lose
it?--or is it your whole stake in the game?"

Griswold's smile was the ironmaster's assurance that he had not
offended.

"It is practically my entire stake--and I can very well afford to lose
it in the way I have indicated. You may call that a paradox, if you
like, but both halves of it are true."

"Then there is one other thing you ought to know, and I'm going to tell
it now," Raymer went on. "We do a general foundry and machine business,
but a good fifty per cent of our profit comes from the Wahaska &
Pineboro Railroad repair work, which we have had ever since the road was
opened."

Griswold was smiling again. "Why should I know that, particularly?" he
asked.

"Because it is rumored that Jasper Grierson has been quietly absorbing
the stock and bonds of the road, and if h