“Dick, I got only one real notion in business and philanthropy. I bank on it in both trades. I keep gunning for men with coal in their engines and a disposition to burn it, and go on till they bust up into scrap iron, and when I find one, I give him a show. If I think he's got the instinct to follow his nose like a setter pup, and not get nervous and climb telegraph poles, I give him a show. Well--Aidee had the coal and the disposition, and he burnt it all right, and I gave him his show. Didn't I? He's got the idea now that he's run himself into the ditch and turned scrap iron. Humph! Well! He lost his nerve anyway. Why, Hicks is dead, and Wood's dead, and they can scrap it out in hell between 'em, can't they? What business he got to lose his nerve? He used to have an idea God Almighty was in politics, and no quitter, and meant to have a shy at business. Interesting idea, that. Ho! He never proved it. What the blazes he want to quit for now? Well! I was going to say, I'm gambling on you now for a setter pup, sonny, without believing you can ride Wood's machine. I'll give you a show, when you're good and through with that. I've been buying Chickering R. R. stock. Want some of it? Yes, sir, I'm going to own that line inside a year, and give you a job there that'll make you grunt to reach around it. Ho! Ted says he's going to take John Keys' girl and go to Nevada. Ain't so foolish as you'd expect of him. Sounds cheerful. Ted's a drooling damn fool all right, but he's no quitter. I hear you're going to marry Champney's daughter?” “I will if I can.” “You don't say! Ain't any better off'n that? Humph! Well, Henry Champney's petered out, but then he's pretty old now. He could talk tall in his time, near as good as Aidee, but more windy. Aidee had a better outfit of brains, but Champney was a fine figure of a man, and burnt coal all right. Why, I met my wife on a lake steamer, and married her when I got to Port Argent with twenty-one dollars and fifty cents in my pocket, and she never understood how it happened--claimed she didn't, anyhow--and that afternoon I heard Henry Champney make a speech from the Court House steps that sounded like he was President of the Board of Prophets, and I bet a man twenty dollars Champney was prophesying all right, and lost it, I did. I began housekeeping on a dollar and a half. Yes, sir. 'Will if you can!' Ho! Well, why can't you?” The big talkative man wandered off into mellow reminiscence, and Hennion presently took his leave. He came to the Champney house and was about to ring the bell, but Camilla spoke from the corner of the porch, where she sat hidden in the black shadows of the vines. “Do you want me, Dick?” “Yes.”