Lake devoted several days to missionary work in Bington, pointing out the great depreciation of property that would follow such a move, and he finally left with a feeling that the company would have an extremely difficult time getting the necessary legislation from the town officials. Still, he was not entirely at ease, for officials are sometimes “induced” to act contrary to the wishes of the people they are supposed to represent. But he believed he had made the situation such that Babington would come back to him. Surely, it would be cheaper to deal with him than to buy an entire town board. Thirty of the sixty days slipped away, and Lake grew really anxious. The Interurban Traction Company could not be a success without a connecting link between the two main stretches of its line, and Lake had not believed that it would dare to proceed with its plans until this was assured. Consequently, he had expected all work to stop, pending negotiations with him. But work did not stop. There were two or three trifling gaps at other places, and the company was laying the rails to bridge them, in addition to improving the road-beds of the lines it had bought. It even began to build a half-mile of track to reach one terminus of his little road. Clearly, there was no anticipation of trouble in ultimately beating him. “It’s my lack of money,” he soliloquized. “I’ve got the basis of a good thing, if I only had the money to make it good, but I haven’t, and they know it. Murray was right.” His thoughts being thus turned to Murray, he went to see him, in the faint hope that he might interest him in the plan. Murray had money to invest. But Murray deemed the risk too great in this instance. “They can beat you,” said Murray. “They have unlimited resources, and they’ll certainly get through Bington on another street, if you persist in making your terms too stiff. Very likely, they would have given you three thousand or possibly even five thousand for your option when they first came to you, and they may do it now.” “I tell you, it’s a good thing,” insisted Lake. “If it’s really as good a thing as you think it is,” said Murray, “you will have no difficulty in getting somebody with money to take it off your hands at a good margin of profit to you, but I can’t see it.” In this emergency, Lake recalled a man of considerable wealth who had known him as a boy and had taken an interest in him. It was humiliating not to be able to put the scheme through himself, after all his planning and confident talk, but it was better to turn it over to some one else than to fail entirely. So he went to see Andrew Belden. “There is a remote chance of success,” declared Belden, “but I would not care to risk twenty thousand on it.” “The company can’t get through Bington, except on that franchise,” insisted Lake.