Nothing irritates me more after a morning’s fruitless telephoning or ineffectual running about than to have Fred Salmon smile sleekly, clap me on the back and mumble mechanically: "Great work, old boy! You’re doing fine!" What is the use of these false inanities? On Saturday he came to me with the gratifying intelligence that Imber and Smith, who took two millions of the bonds, have already sold out their allotment. "Damn them!" was the only answer I could find. "That’s what I say," he answered in his perfect rôle of being all things to all men, then reflectively, "I think Smith’s a liar, though." I’ll wager nevertheless that he congratulated Smith as heartily as he bruises my back. To be all things to all men is surely one of the most disgusting traits in a human biped. Fitfully ever and again I wish myself out of the ruck and rabble of all that. But sadly and heavily it comes to me that it is better perhaps to bear the ills one has than to fly to others that are a mere sinister blank. I seem like a man on a raft with the storm-lashed waves washing over me the while I gasp for breath and hope for rescue. I wonder what this life would be like if upon coming home to Crestlands there were not those eager little retrievers to fetch and to carry and to wait upon me, to surround me with their glad young freshness. But in candor I must admit that but for them I should be leading my old secluded life, undisturbed among books, that now seems remote as a past incarnation. The weeks go by and, toiling under our burden, we are desperately trying to stem the rush of time. In certain hard-pressed moments I have a sickly feeling that time will win—and crush us. A revoltingly new discovery I made yesterday, that Fred has taken to drinking during business hours, suddenly drew the life out of me like a suction pump. Then, realizing the meaning and the enormity of the fact, I was frightened out of fear and talked to him in as friendly and kindly a vein as the circumstances would permit, in an effort to show him our position and where it might lead us. His first snarl of defiance gave way to contrition. He wept maudlin tears and made promises so robust that they ought to outlive him, but—I feel shaken as never before. Meanwhile Sampson and Company are calling for the payments due on our allotment of bonds, and Fred, the smiler and the diplomat, is shirking interviews with them. "What we need, Ranny," he said to me to-day in chastened mood, "is capital, more capital. We went into this business on a shoe string—sometimes it will hold till you can get a rope and sometimes—" —"Even a life line is too late," I supplied. He did not answer. But after a pause he began afresh: "Couldn’t you get round and see some of your rich friends—see whether they could tide us over for a spell?"