be built for the men who paved streets and dug ditches and laid sidewalks and strung wires. And more stores and more hotels and more churches and more schools and more places of amusement were needed. And the fire fed on its own fury and spread to lengths undreamed by those who first set the match to the dry grass. The process of speculation was as easily defined. The first buyers were cautious; they looked over the vacant lots carefully; weighed their advantages and disadvantages; the prospect of the city growing this way or that. But scarcely had they bought when they sold again at a profit, and were seized with a quick regret that they had not bought more, or earlier. Soon the caution of the early transactions was forgotten in the rush for more lots which, almost immediately, could be re-sold at a profit. Judgment and discretion became handicaps in the race; the successful man was he who threw all such qualities to the winds. Fortunes were made; intrinsic values were lost sight of in the glare of great and sudden profits. Prices mounted up and up, and when calmer counsels held that they had reached their limits all such counsels were abashed by prices soaring higher still. And the firm of Conward & Elden had profited not the least in these wild years of gain-getting. Their mahogany finished first floor quarters were the last word in office luxuriance. Conward's private room might with credit have housed a premier or a president. Its purpose was to be impressive, rather than to give any other service, as Conward spent little of his time therein. On Dave fell the responsibility of office management, and his room was fitted for efficiency rather than luxury. It commanded a view of the long general office where a battery of stenographers and clerks took care of the detail of the business of Conward & Elden. And Dave had established his ability as an office manager. His fairness, his fearlessness, his impartiality, his courtesy, his even temper--save on rare and excusable occasions--had won from the staff a loyalty which Conward, with all his abilities as a good mixer, could never have commanded.