“Show me,” said the banker, and Jim showed him for an hour. He gave production figures, costs, prices, profits. “It’s a good statement, a sound statement,” the banker said. “You have no quick assets—that’s bad. That demand-paper I don’t like; but otherwise—otherwise it is a very creditable statement.” Jim was astonished. “How much do you want?” the banker asked. “Twenty-five thousand dollars,” Jim said, hesitatingly. “I guess we can fix that up. The board meets at noon. Can you come in and tell them your story?” “Certainly.” “You believe twenty-five thousand dollars will bring your mill to efficiency and carry you to a point where your own sales will take care of expenses?” “I’m sure of it.” “Come in at twelve, then, and we’ll see.” Jim returned at twelve and repeated his facts to the assembled board. Before they broke up Jim had given them the company’s note for twenty-five thousand dollars, had that amount on deposit in the bank, and a book of blank checks under his arm. “We’ve passed this loan,” said a white-haired old gentleman, “because we like the moral risk. Your statement was fair; what you have said to us was spoken as an honest man speaks. You seem to have gotten a dollar of value for every dollar you have put into this mill, and we hope you’ll win out. We believe you will or we wouldn’t be lending you our money. You haven’t evaded a question; you haven’t held anything back. You’ve confessed to us that you thought you were in a bad hole, which is a poor argument for a borrower to bring forward. Maybe we’d have lent you on the security of the mills; maybe not. What we’ve done is to lend it on the security of you. I say this to you because it must give you pleasure to hear it and because it gives me pleasure to be able to say it. I cannot say such things as often as I wish. Now go to it, young man, and lick the stuffing out of that other crowd.” Jim went out, his head in a pink cloud, his feet treading something lighter than mundane pavement. Why, they had not thought he was in a hole at all! The things Grierson and he had looked on as scarcely creditable makeshifts were approved as sound business, and they had given him money. How easy money was to get! It astonished him. Thirty thousand dollars he had borrowed from the Diversity Bank, with no difficulty; twenty-five thousand more poured into his purse from the City Bank, with compliments attached. His policy had won. He had found some one who appreciated being told the whole uncolored truth. After all, the world had not trampled its ideals into the mire of money-chasing. Even to-day the sound things of life commanded a market value. Business men, in high places of trust, business men of tested capacity, placed the moral before the material risk. The president of the bank had said, “I would rather lend a known honorable man money on doubtful security than to venture a loan to a dubious man on Government bonds.”