situation and his crying need, only to be told that
no one in that office was capable of assisting him. He was referred,
however, to an English engineer who, it was barely possible, could
handle the job. In closing, the Carnegie man voiced a vague warning:

"His name is Dell, and he used to be with one of the Edinburgh
concerns, so don't let him know your inside figures. He might spring a
leak."

A half-hour later Mitchell, his arms full of blue-prints, was in Mr.
Dell's office. But the English engineer hesitated; he was very busy;
he had numerous obligations. Mitchell gazed over the threadbare rooms
and hastily estimated how much of the nine hundred and twenty dollars
would be left after he had paid his hotel bill. What there was to do
must be done before the next morning's sun arose.

"This job is worth ten sovereigns to me if it is finished tonight," he
declared, briskly.

Mr. Dell hesitated, stumbled, and fell. "Very well. We'll begin at
once," said he.

He unrolled the blue-prints, from a drawer he produced a sliding-rule.
He slid this rule up; he slid it down; he gazed through his glasses
at space; he made microscopic Spencerian figures in neat rows and
columns. He seemed to pluck his results from the air with necromantic
cunning, and what had taken the young man at his elbow days and nights
of cruel effort to accomplish--what had put haggard lines about his
mouth and eyes--the engineer accomplished in a few hours by means
of that sliding-rule. Meanwhile, with one weary effort of will, his
visitor summoned his powers and cross-examined him adroitly. Here was
the very man to supply the one missing link in the perfect chain;
but Mr. Dell would not talk. He did not like Americans nor American
methods, and he made his dislike apparent by sealing his lips.
Mitchell played upon his vanity at first, only to find the man wholly
lacking in conceit. Changing his method of attack, Mitchell built a
fire under Mr. Dell. He grilled everything British, the people, their
social customs, their business methods, even English engineers, and
he did it in a most annoying manner. Mr. Dell began to perspire.
He worked doggedly on for a while, then he arose in defense of his
country, whereupon Mitchell artfully shifted his attack to English
steel-mills. The other refuted his statements flatly. At length the
engineer was goaded to anger, he became disputative, indignant,
loquacious.

When Louis Mitchell flung himself into the dark