bunches of letters and memoranda in their hands as they hurried. Messenger boys ran up and down the streets with telegrams. Buyers from the Kansas smelters, smelters in Illinois, smelters up about St. Louis, smelters in Indiana, smelters in Wales, nosed around like ferrets. Fine young men, who were supposed to look after the interests of the big foreign companies, sauntered out of bar-rooms, doing violence to the supposition. Map-sellers whacked their hands with folders. Wooden booths flung signs to the streets bigger than the booths themselves: "Mineral Companies Promoted," "Mining and Smelting," "Mines, Options, Leases,"--there was no end to the variations of the eternal theme of mining. Town lots, switches of flats, and hill ridges were being swapped and sold and leased from the curb-stone; leases were being made from buggies and options were being granted from a horse's back. "Whewee!" marvelled Steering, with a little itch of fear for the ore-mad people, "legal forms are being put to fearful strains, are they not, with all this heedless buying and selling?" Madeira laughed loudly, "God bless you, legal forms! All that a man who wants to sell has to do is to throw a plank, any little rotten plank, across the chasm of future litigation and ten buyers will walk it with nerves of steel." He patted Steering's shoulder. "My boy, it's this headlong impetus that assures the success of the Canaan Company. If I get that thing started once, all I have to do is to advertise it down here a week. The stock will go like hot-cakes. People don't care what they buy, just so they buy. They've got no sense of value left. Why, a man found an outcrop of a zinc lode under his chicken-coop yesterday--and to-day the price of chicken-coops has gone up." Madeira patted Steering's shoulder again and laughed again, pleased at his aptness in figuring the thing out. "He's just exactly right," said the girl, nodding at Steering. "Over here the average man needs a guardian to keep him out of the clutches of the 'boodlers.' I almost hate to see this sort of excitement come into Canaan. Father has been pretty busy all his life looking after infant men, but from now on his plight is going to be pitiable. I saw that yesterday afternoon, Dad, when the farmers were filing into the bank to put their money into your hands." The girl, turning back to smile at Madeira, was the cause of Steering's turning back, too, and he was surprised to see a patriarchal, benign expression on Madeira's face, as though a reflection of the girl's illusions about his character lay warm upon him. "Oh, I don't mind my job as nurse for the Canaanites, Pet," said Madeira softly, and then waved one hand out toward the city and changed the subject. "Pretty good for a lazy semi-southern State, eh, Steering?" He nudged the girl next and added: "Before we are through with him we'll have convinced the New Yorker that a good deal happens outside New York. Won't we, Pet?"