"If every man were as moderate as you, and I am sure as Mr. Savelli, I should have nothing to say against it. Why should I? But the working man, unhappily, is not moderate." "I see," said Paul. "You preach, or advocate--I think you preach--total abstinence, and so feel it your duty to abstain yourself." "That is so," said Mr. Finn, helping himself to mustard. "I don't wish to bore you with my concerns; but I'm a fairly large employer of labour. Now I have found that by employing only pledged abstainers I get extraordinary results. I exact a very high rate of insurance, towards a fund--I need not go into details--to which I myself contribute a percentage--a far higher rate than would be possible if they spent their earnings on drink. I invest the whole lot in my business--their stoppages from wages and my contributions. I guarantee them 3 per cent.; I give them, actually, the dividends that accrue to the holders of ordinary stock in my company. They also have the general advantages of insurance--sickness, burial, maternity, and so forth--that they would get from an ordinary benefit society." "But that's enormous," cried Paul, with keen interest. "On the face of it, it seems impossible. It seems entirely uneconomic. Co-operative trading is one thing; private insurance another. But how can you combine the two?" "The whole secret lies in the marvellously increased efficiency of the employee." He developed his point. Paul listened attentively. "But," said he, when his host concluded, "isn't it rather risky? Supposing, for the sake of argument, your business failed." Mr. Finn held up the lean, brown hand on which the diamond sparkled. "My business cannot fail." Paul started. The assertion had a strange solemnity. "Without impertinence," said he, "why can't it fail?" "Because God is guiding it," said Silas Finn. The fanatic spoke. Paul regarded him with renewed interest. The black hair streaked with white, banging over the temples on the side away from the parting, the queerly streaked beard, the clear-cut ascetic features, the deep, mournful eyes in whose depths glowed a soul on fire, gave him the appearance of a mad but sanctified apostle. Barney Bill, who profoundly distrusted all professional drinkers of water, such as Mr. Finn's employees, ate his cold beef silently, in the happy surmise that no one was paying the least attention to his misperformances with knife, fork and fingers. Jane looked steadily from Paul to Silas and from Silas to Paul. Paul said: "How do you know God is guiding it?" At the back of his mind was an impulse of mirth--there was a touch of humorous blasphemy in the conception of the Almighty as managing director of "Fish Palaces, Limited"--but the nominal earthly managing director saw not the slightest humour in the proposition. "Who is guiding you in your brilliant career?" he asked.