orce of
fortune; Crocker a Yankee, son of a keen, self-made father, who had
fought his way up to a position of mastery in the woolen mills of New
England; DeLancy from Detroit, of more modest means, son of a small
business man, to whom his education had meant a genuine sacrifice; while
George Granning, older by many years than the rest, was evidence of that
genius for evolution that stirs in the American mass. They knew but
little of his history beyond what he had chosen to confide in his
silent, reserved way.

He had the torso of a stevedore, the neck and hands of the laborer,
while the boulder-like head, though devoid of the lighter graces of
imagination and wit, had certain immovable qualities of persistence and
determination in the strongly hewn jaw and firm, high-cheekbones. He
was tow-headed and blue-eyed, of unfailing good humor, like most men of
great strength. Only once had he been known to lose his temper, and that
was in a football match in his first year in the varsity. His opponent,
doubtless hoping to intimidate the freshman, struck him a blow across
the face under cover of the first scrimmage. Before the half was over
the battering he had received from the enraged Granning was so terrific
that he had to be transferred to the other side of the line.

Granning had worked his way through Andover by menial service at the
beginning, gradually advancing by acquiring the agencies for commercial
fields and doing occasional tutoring. His summers had been given over to
work in foundries and in preparation for the business career he had
chosen long ago. He was deeply religious in a quiet, unostentatious way.
That there had been stormy days in the beginning, tragedies perhaps, the
friends divined; besides, there were lines in his face, stern lines of
pain and hardship, that had been softened but could never disappear.

CHAPTER II

FOUR AMBITIONS, AND THREE WAYS TO MAKE MONEY

They dined that night on the top of the Astor roof, where in the midst
of aerial gardens one forgot that another city waited toiling below.
Their table was placed by an embrasure from which they could scan the
dark reaches toward the west where the tenements of the city, broken by
the occasional uprising of a blatant sign, mathematically divided into
squares by rows of sentinel lights, rolled somberly toward the river. To
the south, vaguely defined by the converging watery darkness, the city
ran down to flaming towers in the glisten