the meeting of the new company to-day. He's full of the
scheme, knows every foot of the land, and is willing to put a whole
bunch of money into it. We've elected him president of the concern."

By the same afternoon the facts of the case were in McDermott's
possession, and the following morning, upon seeing Frank about to enter
the De Peyster offices, he advanced toward him, hand outstretched. He
was entirely unprepared for the manner in which he was received. Frank
nodded to him slightingly, with the scant courtesy he might have
accorded a domestic whom he disliked, and said, with directness, looking
him squarely in the eyes, "I don't care to shake hands with you,
McDermott."

Dermott regarded him steadily in return, the gray gleam in his eyes a
bit brighter, the lines of his mouth harder. Whatever the grave faults
of these two men may have been, there was not a whit of cowardice
between them as they stood facing each other.

"So!" said Dermott. "So!" And yet a third time he repeated "so!"--his
tone one of grave consideration. "Had another done what ye have just
done, Mr. Ravenel," he said, at length, "this little episode might not
have ended so gayly. But for you I have so slight a respect that there's
nothing you could do to me that would make me call ye to account for
it." And, raising his hat high and jauntily, he said, with a laugh:
"Good-morning, Ravenel!"

Frank turned white at the words, but the Irishman had disappeared in an
elevator, and any immediate action seemed impossible and theatric. In
the short time he had spent in New York he had learned many things, and
the narrow, tiled halls of an office building twenty-three stories high,
in Wall Street, did not seem the fitting background for a personal
encounter to which the hills of North Carolina might have lent
themselves with picturesqueness.

He sat thinking the matter over in the club that night with two things
fixed in his mind. First, that he would go to see Katrine in Paris
immediately; of the outcome of such a meeting he took no thought
whatever. Second, that he would put this railroad scheme through;
already the feeling of power, of the consciousness of unsystematized
ability, was stirring within him.

The affair with McDermott rankled, however, and it was with drawn brows
and tightened lips that he answered a telephone call--a call which
changed both of the plans which he had so carefully arranged.

His mother's doctor at Bar Harbor had rung