ed
grief, his strong frame bore up under it without the slightest
weakening.

On the afternoon of his return from his wife's funeral he shut himself
up in his library and remained there all the evening, refusing to come
to dinner, calling for a bottle of wine and a sandwich and desiring
afterward to be left alone.

Later in the evening he sent for Mr. Fabian to come to him, and there
opened to his eldest son and partner, in whose business talents he had
great confidence, a scheme of speculation so venturous, so gigantic that
the younger man was shocked and staggered, and began to lose faith in
the sound intellect of the Iron King.

"This will make us twice told the wealthiest men in the United States,
if not in the whole world," concluded Old Aaron Rockharrt.

"If it should succeed," said Mr. Fabian, dubiously.

"It shall succeed; I say it. We shall go down to Rockhold to-morrow
morning and the next day to the works, and there I shall give my whole
mind to this matter and make it succeed, do you hear? Make it succeed!
And place my name at the head of the list of wealthy men of this age."

Mr. Fabian did not dare to raise any objection.

"I am pleased, sir," he said, "that you find in this new enterprise an
object of so much interest to engage your mind. Employ me in any way you
think fit. I am quite at your service, as it is my bounden duty to be."

"Very well; that is as it should be. Now I am going to bed. Good night,"
said the Iron King, abruptly dismissing his son, then rising and ringing
for his valet, whose office, since the patient old lady's death, was now
no longer a sinecure.

It seems passing strange that a man of seventy-six years, who had just
lost his life-long and beloved companion--for in his own selfish way he
loved her after a sort, and perhaps more than he loved any human being
in the world--and who must expect before many years to follow her,
should be so full of this world's avarice and ambition; so eager to make
more, and more, and more money, and to stand at the head of the list of
all the wealthiest men in the land. Strange, yet the name of such a one
is legion. But in the case of Old Aaron Rockharrt there might have been
this additional motive--the necessity to seek refuge from the pains of
grief and remorse in the anxieties and activities of speculation. So he
was very eager to get back as soon as possible to business and to enter
at once upon the enterprise he had planned.

Cora wa