"Van!" she kissed me with a bit of reproof. "I wish you would be more religious." My wife had been growing very serious of late. Under May's example she had taken to church work and attended religious classes. She and May had discovered lately a new preacher, who seemed a very earnest young man. The Bible class he had formed sometimes met at our house, and Sarah preferred to go to his church, which was a long way from our house, to the church near by where we had a pew. It made little difference where I was taken to church, and I was glad to have Sarah pleased with her young preacher. So I kissed my wife good-by and hurried off, half an hour late as it was. There was trouble brewing. It had shown a hand some months back, darkly and mysteriously. One day, while I was East, a man had walked into Slocum's office, introduced himself as a Henry A. Frost, and said that he represented some minority bondholders of the defunct London and Chicago Company. We knew that there were a few scattered bonds outstanding, not more than forty thousand dollars all told, but we had never looked for trouble from them. Mr. Frost represented to Slocum that his "syndicate" did not wish to make us trouble, but that before the property of the London and Chicago concern was finally turned over to our corporation he wished to effect a settlement. Slocum asked him his figure for the bonds held by his "syndicate," believing at the worst that Frost would demand little more than the cash price of fifty. To his astonishment the man wanted par and interest, and when Slocum laughed at his proposal, he threw out hints of trouble that might come if his "syndicate" were not satisfied. Slocum referred the matter to me, and advised me to seek some compromise with Frost. "For," he said, "our record is not altogether clear in that transaction," referring to the sum we had paid for services to the treasurer of the bankrupt corporation. This move on the part of Frost and his associates was blackmail, of course, but the lawyer advised compromise. It would have been the wise thing to do; but having succeeded so far, I felt my oats too much to be held up in this fashion. I refused peremptorily to deal with the man, and Slocum intimated to him, when he called for a reply, that we would not consider giving him more than the other bondholders had received; namely, fifty per cent of the par value of the bonds he held in new bonds. Frost went off, and we had heard nothing more from him.