"Only by proxy," Phil answered. "Somebody has to be on the job more or less. I don't mind so long as they give me a fairly free hand. Matters here have become secondary in the Norquay scheme of things, but they're still quite a handful for somebody." "Loosen up," Rod commanded. "You weren't at all explicit in any of your letters, and the governor confined himself mostly to checks and a few casual admonitions. Has Grove quit Hawk's Nest for a career in business? What does this trust company thing amount to?" "Lord knows. Did you go and see the plant?" "I wasn't interested. Seeing the governor was away I only stayed in town overnight. I saw an electric sign in huge letters on a roof downtown." "The sign of progress. The oriflamme of a budding financier, a comet flashing athwart the financial firmament," Phil intoned with ironic inflection. "That's Grove. Hawk's Nest and timber was too cramped a field for his vaulting ambition. He couldn't be satisfied with the one-horse show that was started here a century back. Our brother is by way of shedding a golden luster on the name, Rod." Rod snorted. "What's he after?" "That's what _I_ ask," Phil replied. "Echo answers what? Money, is one's natural answer. But that doesn't follow. He could live here and run things in the same offhand manner that we're used to, and have more money than he would ever need. There's always been a surplus. Do you know what the income of this estate runs for the last twenty-five years?" Rod shook his head. "Over a hundred thousand on the average. It could be doubled, trebled, if one cared to go at the timber rough-shod. So it isn't money," Phil continued. "The governor would have been perfectly satisfied to turn everything over to him as soon as he married. On the contrary, he persuaded the gov. to set him up in this blatant money-grabbing scheme. Personally, I think private banking and trust fund operations are just a glorified sort of pawnbroking. We've always made our money out of productive enterprises. I can understand Christ's indignation at the money changers. They're damned parasites. Grove, however, has no such peculiar ideas. He's become a man of affairs. The two years he spent in New York and London financial circles have turned his head, I think. Talks in millions. A wizard of finance. A wizard! Grove could always fool women. He never fooled a man of keen perception--outside of his own father. Grove's actually proud of this trust company thing, you know. Nailed our name to his financial flag-pole. And he has associated with him five or six of the shrewdest business buccaneers on the coast,--Deane, Arthur Richston, Mark Sherburne, and his father-in-law, John Wall. I don't like it, Rod." "It's his funeral," Rod answered carelessly, "if they pluck him." "I wasn't thinking about him," Phil drawled. "It's the rest of us. We wouldn't like a smash. Maybe I'm pessimistic." "What does the pater think of it?"