“I ordered some rods sent up. Please joint them and let me give them the once over. The idea drifts through my mind that two weeks in the woods is what I need. If I don’t, I’ll surely start laying on flesh and disgrace the whole family tree. You remember Sir Henry?—the old original Sir Henry, the buccaneer old swashbuckler?” “Yes, sir; I’ve read of him, sir.” Parker had paused in the doorway until such time as the ebbing of his young master’s volubility would permit him to depart on the errand. “Nothing to be proud of, the old pirate.” “Oh, no, sir,” Parker protested. “He was Governor of Jamaica. He died respected.” “It was a mercy he didn’t die hanged,” Francis laughed. “As it was, he’s the only disgrace in the family that he founded. But what I was going to say is that I’ve looked him up very carefully. He kept his figure and he died lean in the middle, thank God. It’s a good inheritance he passed down. We Morgans never found his treasure; but beyond rubies is the lean-in-the-middle legacy he bequeathed us. It’s what is called a fixed character in the breed—that’s what the profs taught me in the biology course.” Parker faded out of the room in the ensuing silence, during which Francis Morgan buried himself in the Panama column and learned that the canal was not expected to be open for traffic for three weeks to come. A telephone buzzed, and, through the electric nerves of a consummate civilization, Destiny made the first out-reach of its tentacles and contacted with Francis Morgan in the library of the mansion his father had builded on Riverside Drive. “But my dear Mrs. Carruthers,” was his protest into the transmitter. “Whatever it is, it is a mere local flurry. Tampico Petroleum is all right. It is not a gambling proposition. It is legitimate investment. Stay with. Tie to it.... Some Minnesota farmer’s come to town and is trying to buy a block or two because it looks as solid as it really is.... What if it is up two points? Don’t sell. Tampico Petroleum is not a lottery or a roulette proposition. It’s bona fide industry. I wish it hadn’t been so almighty big or I’d have financed it all myself.... Listen, please, it’s not a flyer. Our present contracts for tanks is over a million. Our railroad and our three pipe-lines are costing more than five millions. Why, we’ve a hundred millions in producing wells right now, and our problem is to get it down country to the oil-steamers. This is the sober investment time. A year from now, or two years, and your shares will make government bonds look like something the cat brought in....”