ot."

"Don't be afraid. You have to do with an honorable gentleman,"
returned the Greek, with an air of dignity.

The honorable gentleman believed that he had won over the honest clerk
to betray the secrets of the honorable banker, his employer. It was an
honorable game all round. We shall see which of the honorable
gentlemen played it best.

CHAPTER XX

NO, EVELINE!

It was high time Ivan returned to his coal-mine; he was needed there.
While he was fighting duels in Pesth, strange things were happening in
Bondathal. Not far from his workmen's colony there arose enormous
buildings with almost miraculous quickness. As often happens when no
difficulty is made as to price, the only question asked is, how soon
shall the work be finished? The shares had not yet been issued, and
the company had already spent in the interest of the undertaking a
million of money. Everything was pressed forward at fever-heat. Here
was a new invention for making tiles by machinery, there a
donkey-engine supplied the materials for building the walls. The
earthworks were in a most advanced condition, the chimneys smoked, the
roofs were covered, a whole street was already built, a new town was
rising as if by magic.

Of all this activity Ivan had been kept in ignorance by his assistant,
Raune, who had, likewise, been silent as to another disturbing element
which had made its appearance for the first time among the workmen,
and which disputed the palm with "choke-damp" and "foul air," and was
quite as fatal as either. This new element was "a strike." A portion
of Ivan's workmen struck for higher wages, otherwise they would join
the new coal-mine, which was called "The Gentleman's Colony." It
offered nearly double the wages, certainly more than the half again,
of what Ivan paid. This happened after Raune had explained to the men
that he had accepted the office of director, which had been offered to
him by the new company, and he naturally wished to take with him the
best and cleverest among Ivan's men, so that they, too, might profit
by the higher wages. Who could resist such advantageous offers? Miners
are like all other men; they have their price.

Ivan now gnawed the bitter bread of self-reproach. He saw the folly he
had committed in taking into his service and admitting into the
secrets of the business the paid director of a company created to
bring about his own ruin.

A scientific man is not a good business man. While he was