mise himself year after year.

"And here I am at last! Skaal!"

"Welcome home," said Merle, lifting her glass with a smile.

He rang the bell. "What do you want?" her eyes asked.

"Champagne," said Peer to the maid, who appeared and vanished again.

"Are you crazy, Peer?"

He leaned back, flushed and in happy mood, lit a cigarette and told of
his greatest triumph out there; it was after he had finished his work at
the cataracts, and had started again with a branch of the English
firm in Alexandria. One morning in walked the Chief and said: "Now,
gentlemen, here's a chance for a man that has the stuff in him to win
his spurs--who's ready?" And half a score of voices answered "I." "Well,
here's the King of Abyssinia suddenly finds he must be in the fashion
and have a railway--couple of hundred miles of it--what do you say to
that?" "Splendid," we cried in chorus. "Well, but we've got to compete
with Germans, and Swiss, and Americans--and we've got to win." "Of
course"--a louder chorus still. "Now, I'm going to take two men and give
them a free hand. They'll go up there and survey and lay out lines, and
work out the whole project thoroughly, both from the technical and
the financial side--and a project that's better and cheaper than the
opposition ones. Eight months' work for a good man, but I must have it
done in four. Take along assistants and equipment--all you need--and a
thousand pounds premium to the man who puts it through so that we get
the job."

"Peer--were you sent?" Merle half rose from her seat in her excitement.

"I--and one other."

"Who was that?"

"His name was Ferdinand Holm."

Merle smiled her one-sided smile, and looked at him through her
long lashes. She knew it had been the dream of his life to beat that
half-brother of his in fair fight. And now!

"And what came of it?" she asked, with a seeming careless glance at the
lamp.

Peer flung away his cigarette. "First an expedition up the Nile, then
a caravan journey, camels and mules and assistants and provisions and
instruments and tents and quinine--heaps of quinine. Have you any
idea, I wonder, what a job like that means? The line was to run through
forests and tunnels, over swamps and torrents and chasms, and everything
had to be planned and estimated at top speed--material, labour, time,
cost and all. It was all very well to provide for the proper spans and
girders for a viaduct, and estimate for thoroughly sound work in casting
and