“It may cost you a few years of the hardest work you ever bucked down to,” said Miller, “and some sleepless nights, but I really believe you have fallen on to a better thing than any I ever struck. I could make it whiz. I've already done something that will astonish you. I happen to know slightly Tillman Wilson, the president of the Southern Land and Timber Company. Their offices are in Atlanta. I knew he was my man to tackle, so when I got to Atlanta yesterday I ran upon him just as if it were accidental. I invited him to lunch with me at the Capitol City Club--you know I'm a non-resident member. You see, I knew if I put myself in the light of a man with something to sell, he'd hurry away from me; but I didn't. As a pretext, I told him I had some clients up here who wanted to raise a considerable amount of money and that the security offered was fine timber-land. You see that caught him; he was on his own ground. I saw that he was interested, and I boomed the property to the skies. The more I talked the more he was interested, till it was bubbling out all over him. He's a New-Englander, who thinks a country lawyer without a Harvard education belongs to an effete civilization, and I let him think he was pumping me. I even left off my g's and ignored my r's. I let him think he had struck the softest thing of his life. Pretty soon he begun to want to know if you cared to sell, but I skirted that indifferently as if I had no interest whatever in it. I told him your father had bought the property to hold for an advance, that he had spent years of his life picking out the richest timber spots and buying them up. Then he came right out, as I hoped he would, and asked me the amount you wanted to borrow on the property. I had to speak quick, and remembering that you had said the old gentleman had put in about twenty thousand first and last, I put the amount at twenty-five thousand. I was taking a liberty, but I can easily get you out of it if you decide not to do it.” “Twenty-five thousand! On that land?” Alan cried. “It would tickle my father to death to sell it for that.” “I can arrange the papers so that you are not liable for any security outside of the land, and it would practically amount to a sale if you wished it, but you don't wish it. I finally told him that I had an idea that you would sell out for an even hundred thousand.” “A hundred thousand!” repeated Alan, with a cheery laugh. “Yes, we'd let go at that.”