oing on."

Stirling quietly turned the conversation into another channel, but
when Western took his departure he called up his secretary on the
telephone.

"I want you to write Norris & Lander, Vancouver, the first thing in
the morning, and get it off by the Pacific express," he said. "Tell
them they can let a young man named Weston, with whom they've been in
communication, have the money he asks for, to count as stock when he
starts his company, at the biggest discount they can get. They can
charge me usual brokerage, but they're to keep my name out of it."

The secretary said it should be done, and Stirling sat down to his
cigar with a smile. He was inclined to fancy that Weston would find
Norris & Lander much more amenable after that. It was an hour later
when Ida came into the room, and he looked at her thoughtfully.

"There's some grit in that young man, and I guess it's just as well,"
he observed. "He's up against quite a big proposition."

He saw the faint gleam in Ida's eyes.

"If he has taken hold, I think he will put it through," she said.

She turned away the next moment, and moved a glass on the table; but,
when she looked around again, she saw Stirling's smile.

"Well," he said, "considering everything, it's quite likely."

After this, he carefully picked out another cigar, and Ida left him,
wondering what he could have meant.

CHAPTER XXI

THE BRULEE

Stirling, who hitherto, like a wise man, had carefully avoided
wild-cat mining schemes, and, indeed, ventures of any kind outside his
own profession, had for once thrust his prudence into the background
and done what he could to further Weston's project, for a reason which
he would not have admitted to anybody else. He was not famous as a
charitable person, but he had, for all that, unobtrusively held out a
helping hand to a good many struggling men in need of it during his
career, and there were now certain conjectures and suspicions lying
half-formulated at the back of his mind. He had acted on them with the
impulsive promptness which usually characterized him, and it was not
his fault that his efforts proved fruitless, for Weston, as it
happened, neither revisited Vancouver nor communicated with Norris &
Lander.

A week after he left Montreal, Weston met Grenfell in a little British
Columbian settlement shut in by towering ranges and leagues of shadowy
bush, where they were fortunate enough to find a storekeeper who
seemed inclined