epped in with their gold and bought for themselves
a share in our country at half its value."

He stopped to answer for a moment an insistent ringing of the telephone
from the outer office. As he laid the receiver down he turned to Vine.

"Look here," he said, "you doubt my statement. Outside in the office
there is waiting to see me, upon a matter of business, a man who is as
much my enemy as you are. I mean John Drayton, Governor of New York.
Would you call him an honest man?"

"Absolutely!" Vine answered.

"Would you consider him a shrewd man?"

"Certainly," Vine assented.

"Then look here," Weiss said. "I am going to ask him to come into this
office. I am going to treat this matter as an academic discussion, and
I am going to ask him then what the result would be of such a step as
you propose."

"Very well," Vine answered. "I pledge myself to nothing, but I should
like to hear John Drayton's opinion."

CHAPTER XVI

A TRUCE

Weiss unlocked and threw open the office door, and a moment later
returned with a tall, grey-headed man, with closely cropped beard and
gold-rimmed eyeglasses. He shook hands with Vine warmly, and nodded to
Littleson.

"What, you here in the lion's den, Vine?" he remarked, smiling. "Be
careful or they will eat you up."

Vine smiled.

"I am not afraid," he said, "especially now that you are here to support
me."

"Mr. Vine," Weiss said, "shows himself possessed of our natural quality,
audacity. He is here, I frankly believe, to pick up damaging information
against us, for use the next time he issues his thunders. We have been
led into an interesting discussion, and we have a point to refer
to you."

John Drayton sat down and accepted the cigar which Weiss passed him.

"Sure," he said, "I'll be very pleased to join in; but you are a rash
man, Weiss, to refer to me, for you know very well my sympathies are
with Mr. Vine here. I hate you millionaires and your Trusts, on
principle of course, although I must admit that some of you are very
good fellows, and smoke thundering good cigars," he added, taking his
from his mouth for a moment and looking at it.

"I don't care," Weiss answered. "The point I want you to decide
scarcely calls upon your sympathies so much as your judgment. We were
imagining a case in which say half a dozen men, who held the position of
myself and Phineas Duge and Littleson here, I think I might say the
half-dozen most powerful men in America, were sudd