A review of these brief and discouraging annals did not hearten him; but he fell back upon the better mood with which he had begun the morning; he had a new chance, and he proposed to make the best of it. He put aside his coat and hat, lighted the pipe which he had been holding in his hand, and opened his desk. The banker had sent up the combination of the safe, as he had promised, and Saxton began inspecting its contents and putting his office in order. "I'm in for a long stay," he reflected. "Watson and Terrell and those other fellows are just about reaching Park Street, perhaps with virtuous thoughts of having given me a job, if they haven't forgotten me. It's probably a pleasant day in Boston, with the flowers looking their best in the Gardens; but this is better than my Wyoming pastures, anyhow." The books and papers began to interest him, and he was soon classifying the properties that had fallen to his care. He was one of those fortunate individuals who are endowed with a capacity for complete absorption in the work at hand,--the frequent possession of persons, who, like Saxton, enjoy immunity from visits of the alluring will-o'-the-wisps that beguile geniuses. He was so deeply occupied that he did not mark the flight of time and was surprised when a boy came with a message from Porter that he was ready to go to luncheon. "Yon mustn't overdo the thing, young man," said the banker amiably, as he closed his desk. "Don't you adopt our Western method of working all the hours there are. I do it now because my neighbors and customers would talk about me if I didn't, and say that I had lost my grip in my old age." They started up the sloping street, which was intensely hot. "In my last job I worked twenty hours a day," said Saxton, "and lost money in spite of it." "You mean up in Wyoming; the Neponset people wrote me that you were a reformed cattleman." "Yes, I was winter-killed at the business." He assumed that Porter would not care particularly for the details of his failure. Western men are, he knew, much more tolerant of failure than Eastern men; but he was relieved to hear the banker drawling on with a comment on Clarkson, its commercial history and prospects.