When Slocum got around to saying that we were interested in various Western enterprises, the weather seemed to grow cool all of a sudden. But Cousin Farson listened politely and asked some good questions at the end. Then he let us go all the way across the harbor to the hotel where we had put up, to get our dinner. I thought we had lost him, but Slocum thought not. For Cousin Farson had asked us to go fishing with him in the afternoon. "He might have given us a sandwich," I growled to Slocum. "That place of his looks as if he could afford it." Slocum smiled at my irritation. "He did not ask you down here. He doesn't feel responsible for your coming. Probably Cousin Susan would need a warning before inviting two strangers to dinner." Well, the little old schoolmaster came over in the afternoon with a very pretty steam launch. The fishing was not all a pretence. He liked to fish; but I never saw a man who listened as keenly as that man did. And I did the talking. I let him see that we were engaged on a big work; that in putting his dollars into our packing-houses he wasn't just taking a flyer, way off at the end of the earth. I had had some experience in dealing with men by this time; it was no raw young schemer who came to this party. And I had observed that what men want when they are thinking of putting their money into a new enterprise is to have confidence in the men who will spend their dollars. My experience has shown me that the cheapest thing to get in this world is money. If you have the ideas, the money will flow like water downhill. At any rate, that was the way it worked with good Mr. Farson. We stayed there in Deer Isle three days, and had one simple meal in the banker's house after Cousin Susan had been duly warned. At the end of the time Farson thought he would give us a couple of hundred thousand dollars and take some of our bonds, and he thought maybe his brother-in-law would take a few more, and also his brother-in-law's brother. In short, Mr. Farson was the first one in a long row of bricks. He went up with us on the Boston boat, when we started back, to secure the others. It was a glorious night early in August, and, after Slocum had gone to bed, the old banker and I sat up there on the deck watching the coast fade away in the moonlight. I had never seen anything like it before in my life--the black rocks starting right out of the water, the stiff little fir trees, the steep hills rolling back from the sea. [Illustration: _The black rocks starting right out of the water._] "This is the prettiest thing I have ever seen!" I exclaimed. "My wife must come down here next summer." "Yes," the old gentleman replied, with evident pleasure in my praise of his native rocks. "I can tell you that there is very little in the world to compare with the charm of this coast."