The hour had gone when the door opened and a huge, fiery-bearded, dynamic sort of person went swinging past Bruce without a glance and on to the inner offices. The office boy's husky "That's him!" was not needed to tell him that J. Winfield Harrah had arrived. The air suddenly seemed charged electrically. The stenographer speeded up and dapper young clerks and accountants bent to their work with a zeal and assiduity which merited immediate promotion, while "Willie," Bruce noticed, came from a brief session in the private office with the dazed look of one who has just been through an experience. When Bruce's turn came Harrah sat at his desk like an expectant ogre; there was that in his attitude which seemed to say: "Enter; I eat promoters." His eyes measured Bruce from head to foot in a glance of appraisement, and Bruce on his part subjected Harrah to the same swift scrutiny. Without at all being able to explain it Bruce felt instantly at his ease, he experienced a kind of relief as does a stranger in a strange land when he discovers someone who speaks his tongue. Harrah appeared about Bruce's age, perhaps a year or two older, and he was as tall, though lacking Bruce's thickness and breadth of shoulder. His arms were long as a gorilla's and he had huge white fists with freckles on the back that looked like ginger-snaps. Fiery red eyebrows as stiff as two toothbrushes bristled above a pair of vivid blue eyes, while his short beard resembled nothing so much as a neatly trimmed whisk broom, flaming in color. His skin was florid and his hair, which was of a darker shade than his beard, was brushed straight back from a high, white forehead. A tuft of hair stood up on his crown like the crest on a game-cock. Everything about him indicated volcanic temperament, virility, and impulsiveness which amounted to eccentricity. Harrah represented to Bruce practically his last chance, but there was nothing in Harrah's veiled, non-committal eyes as he motioned Bruce to a chair and inquired brusquely: "Well--what kind of a wild-cat have _you_ got?" which would have led an observer to wager any large amount that his last chance was a good one. Bruce's eyes opened and he stared for the fraction of a second at the rudeness of the question, then they flashed as he answered shortly. "I'm not peddling wild-cats, or selling mining stock to widows and orphans--if you happen to be either." Capital is not accustomed to tart answers to its humor caustic, from persons in need of financial assistance for their enterprises. Harrah raised his toothbrush eyebrows and once more he favored Bruce with a sweeping glance of interest, which Bruce, in his sensitive pride, resented. "Who sent you?" Harrah demanded roughly. "Never mind who sent me," Bruce answered in the same tone, reaching for his hat which he had laid on the floor beside him, "but he had his dog-gone nerve directing me to an ill-mannered four-flusher like you."