"Been plowing with our heifer?" asked Breede incisively. Bean was familiar with that homely metaphor. He felt easier. "_Your_ heifer!" He would have liked to snort as the old gentleman did, but refrained from an unpractised effort! "Your heifer? No; I bought a good fat yoke of steers to do my plowing. Took _his_ money to buy one of 'em with!" He waved a careless arm at the smouldering-vessel across the table. They were all gasping, in horror, in disgust. He was a little embarrassed. He sought to smooth the thing over a bit with his next words. "Eagle shot down with its own feather," he said, hazily recalling something that had seemed very poetic when he read it. "Wha'd I tell you? Wha'd I _tell_ you!" shouted the oldest director, doing an intricate dance step. "Hold 'ny Federal?" asked Breede. "A block or two; several margins of it," said Bean. "How many shares?" "Have to ask Kennedy & Balch; they're my brokers. I guess about some seven or eight hundred shares." "Wha'd I tell you? Wha'd I _tell_ you?" again shouted the oldest director, and, as if despairing of an answer, he swore surprisingly for one of his refined garniture and aroma. "Find out something in this office?" asked Breede, evenly. "Why wouldn't I? I found out something the minute you sent people to me with that 'By the way--' stuff. I knew it as quick as you had them breaking their ankles trying to get my fifty shares. Knew it the very minute you sent that--that slinking gazelle to me." He pointed at Tully. [Illustration: "Oh, put up your trinkets!" said Bean, with a fine affectation of weariness] He had not meant to call Tully that. It rushed out. Tully wriggled uneasily in his chair at the desk, blushed well into his yellow beard, then drew out a kerchief of purest white silk and began nervously to polish his glasses. "Hoo-shaw-Ha-ha-Hooshway!" It was Breede, with, for the moment, a second purple face on the Board of Directors. Neither Bean nor Tully ever knew whether he had suppressed a laugh or a sneeze. "Come, come, _come_!" broke in the oldest, sweeping the largest director aside with one finger as he pulled a chair to the table. "This'll never do with _us_, you know! How much, how much, how much?" He again poised the chastely wrought fountain pen of gold above the dainty check-book in Morocco leather. "Have to give 'em up you know; can't allow _that_ sort of underhand work; where'd the world be, where'd it be, where'd it _be_? Sign an order; tell me what you paid. Take your word for it!" He was feeling for Bean the contempt which a really distinguished safe-blower is said to feel for the cheap thief who purloins bottles of milk from basement doorways in the gray of dawn. "Now, now, _now_, boy!" The pen was still poised. "Oh, put up your trinkets," said Bean with a fine affectation of weariness.