"If you lay these matters down now," Carboner observed coldly, poking the fire with an old pair of tongs, "they will be glass. If you grasp them in a strong hand, they will become diamonds." [Illustration: "_If you grasp them in a strong hand, they will become diamonds._"] But to take a woman's money! I thought for a moment--and then dismissed the scruple as swiftly as it had come. This woman was a good gambler! "All right!" I exclaimed, drawing on my overcoat, which I had laid aside. "Good! Don't worry about anything. Make your trees bear fruit. That is what you can do, young man." Old Carboner patted me on the back in a fatherly fashion. "Now we will have some coffee together. There is yet time." The man who had opened the door for me brought in two cups of strong coffee, and I drank mine standing while Carboner sipped his and talked. "This disturbance will be over soon," he said sagely. "Then we shall have such times of wealth and speculation as the world has never seen. Great things will be done in a few years, and you will do some of them. There are those who have confidence in you, my son. And confidence is worth many millions in gold." He gave me his hand in dismissal. "Come to see me again, and we will talk," he added sociably. * * * * * On the ground floor of my building there was a broker's office. It was a new firm of young men, without much backing. My old friend, Dickie Pierson, was one of them, and on his account I had given the firm some business now and then. This morning, as I was hurrying back to my office, I ran into Dick standing in the door of his place. He beckoned me into the room where the New York quotations were beginning to go up on the board. He pointed to the local list of the day before; Meat Products stretched in a long string of quotations across the board, mute evidence of yesterday's slaughter. "What's wrong with your concern?" Dick asked anxiously. "Some one is pounding it for all he is worth." "Who were selling yesterday?" "Stearns & Harris," he answered. (They were brokers that Strauss's crowd were known to use.) There was a mystery here somewhere. For there could not be any considerable amount of the stock loose, now that Dround's block was locked up in Jules Carboner's safe. Yet did the Strauss crowd dare to sell it short in this brazen way? They must think it would be cheap enough soon, or they knew where they could get some stock when they wanted it. "What's up?" Dick asked again, hovering at my elbow. I judged that he had gone into Meat Products on his own account, and wanted to know which way to jump.