in a slow affirmative. "It's rotten!" he said.

Norman smiled.

"It's our privilege to cuss it out; but it's a condition."

Tom was in town that day for the purpose of taking a train to
Louisville, where he was to meet the officials of an Indiana city
forced, despite the hard times, to relay many miles of worn-out
water-mains. He made a pencil computation on the back of an envelope.
The contract was a large one, and his bid, which he was confident was
lower than any competitor could make, would still stand a cut and leave
a margin of profit. Before he took the train he went to the bank, and,
when he reached the Kentucky metropolis, his first care was to assure
the "wheel-horse" member of the municipal purchasing board that he was
ready to talk business on a modern business basis.

Notwithstanding, he lost the contract. Other people were growing
desperate, too, it appeared, and his bribe was not great enough. One
member of the committee stood by him and gave him the facts. A check had
been passed, and it was a bigger check than Tom could draw without
trenching on the balance left in the Iron City National to meet the
month's pay-roll at Gordonia.

"You sent a boy to mill," said the loyal one. "And now it's all over, I
don't mind telling you that you sent him to the wrong mill, at that.
Bullinger's a hog."

"I'd like to do him up," said Tom vindictively.

"Well, that might be done, too. But it would cost you something."

Tom did not take the hint; he was not buying vengeance. But on the way
home he grew bitterer with every subtracted mile. He could meet one more
pay-day, and possibly another; and then the end would come. This one
contract would have saved the day, and it was lost.

The homing train, rushing around the boundary hills of Paradise, set him
down at Gordonia late in the afternoon. There was no one at the station
to meet him, but there was bad news in the air which needed no herald
to proclaim it. Though it still wanted half an hour of quitting time,
the big plant was silent and deserted.

Tom walked out the pike and found his father smoking gloomily on the
Woodlawn porch.

"You needn't say it, son," was his low greeting, when Tom had flung
himself into a chair. "It was in the South Tredegar papers this
morning."

"What was in the papers?"

"About our losin' the Indiany contract. I reckon it was what did the
business for us, though there were a-plenty of black looks and a storm
brewin' when we