eady."

The prairie farmer would have been inclined to question the wisdom of
his purchase had he seen the Langford-Ralston Financial Corporation
hopping round its office like a pair of dancing bears. But he did not
see it, and, what was more to the point, he never rued his bargain.

CHAPTER XXIII

So Deep in Love am I

It was not long before Phil and Jim found out that although few people
in Vernock were willing to lend hard cash, many of them were friendly,
even indulgent, and quite ready to encourage any honest enterprise,
and brotherly enough to give a new man a fighting chance.

A week had not gone before outsiders began to see that Jim Langford
had at last found himself. He did not develop, but rather he utilised
what he had always possessed, the powers of winning confidence, of
persuasion, of argument; combined with a shrewdness for sizing up his
clients and knowing instinctively what they wanted, what they were
prepared to go in price, and consequently, what to show them.

And Phil was not a whit behind, for the spirit of emulation was rife
in him. He had been born with a burning ambition to succeed, and now
that he saw a lifetime chance, he exerted all his power of mind and
body to take advantage of it to the full.

The banking account of the Langford-Ralston Company did not fall lower
than that consternation mark of three thousand dollars, and it rapidly
increased with the advent of the spring sunshine and the incoming
settlers who in ever-increasing numbers had heard of the fertility and
the climatic perfection of the Valley; and hearing, came to see; and
seeing, succumbed to Dame Nature's seductiveness. Sales increased; so
did the new company's listings. So rapidly did the Langford-Ralston
Financial Corporation go ahead that the other real-estate men in town
began to sit up and gasp. They had given the "mushroom outfit"
anything from a week to six weeks in which to crumple up, but they
rapidly withdrew the time-limit, contenting themselves with
wait-and-see, wise-acre nods of their heads.

For the first time since leaving his home, Jim took it upon himself to
communicate with his father, who was the head of an old firm of
Edinburgh Solicitors and Lawyers. True, his method of communication
was somewhat impersonal, consisting as it did solely of a continuous
weekly bombardment of pamphlets on the fruit-growing possibilities of
the Okanagan Valley, with the Langford-Ralston Corporation writ lar