ng the health of the other
eighty. One of them, a near-sighted fellow with thick lenses, arose
with the grave assertion that he had taken the floor for the purpose
of correcting a popular fallacy; Englishmen and Yankees, he declared,
were not cousins, they were brothers, and their interests ever had
been and ever would be identical. He said, too, that England wanted
to do business with America, and as for this particular contract, not
only did the British nation as a whole desire America to secure it,
but the chaps who bent over the boards at No. 42-1/2 Threadneedle
Street were plugging for her tooth and nail. His hollow-chested
companions yelled their approval of this statement, whereupon Mitchell
again arose, alternately flushing and paling, and apologized for what
had happened in 1776. He acknowledged himself ashamed of the 1812
affair, moreover, and sympathized with his guests over their present
trouble with the Boers. When he had finished they voted him the best
host and the best little cyanide tank-builder known to them--and then
everybody tried to tell him something at once.

They told him among other things that every bid except his had been in
for two weeks, and that they were in the vault under the care of Mr.
Pitts, the head draftsman. They promised to advise him if any new bids
came in or if any changes occurred, and, most important of all, they
told him that in England all structural steel shapes, instead of being
classified as in America, are known as "angles," and they told him
just how and where to find the official reports giving the price of
the same for every day in the year.

The word "angles" was the missing key, and those official market
reports formed the lock in which to fit it. Mitchell had taken several
mighty strides, and there remained but one more step to take.

When his guests had finally gone home, swearing fealty, and declaring
this to be the best dinner they had ever drunk, he hastened back to
his room, back to the desert of blueprints and to the interminable
columns of figures, and over them he worked like a madman.

He slept two hours before daylight, then he was up and toiling again,
for this was his last day. Using the data he had gathered the night
before, he soon had the price of English and Scottish steel at the
time the last bids were closed. Given one thing more--namely, the cost
of fabrication in these foreign shops, and he would have reduced this
hazard to a certainty, he