He had lost his calm, club poise, and was again the virulent business man of that Wall Street battle, waged daily, where men must have force or fail to survive. Dick saw in him the man who was, the man who at times had shaken the financial world with his desperate bravery and daring, back in the days when giants fought for the beginnings of supremacy. He felt very inexperienced and young, as he looked at this veteran with scars, and impulsively rose to his feet and held out his hand. He was almost dumb with gratitude. "I shouldn't have asked you to say so much," he said. "I am--well--I am sort of down and out with it all! I feel a little bit as I did when the Cornell eleven piled on top of me in the annual, when I played half-back." "Hey! And wasn't that a game!" the old man suddenly enthused, with sparkling eyes. "And how your father and I did yell and howl and beat the heads of those in front! Gad! I remember the old man had a silk hat, and he banged it up and down on a bald head in front until there was nothing but a rim left, and then looked as sheepish as a boy caught stealing apples when he realized what he had done. Oh, but your Daddy was a man, even if he did have a temper, my boy!" His eyes sparkled with a fervid love of the game of his college days, and he seemed to have dismissed the Croix d'Or from his mind, as if it were of no importance. Nor did he, during the course of that visit, refer to it again. He made exception, when he shook hands with Dick at the train. "Don't let anybody bluff you," he said. "Remember that a brave front alone often wins. If you fail with the Croix the world is still big, and--well--you're one of my legatees. Good-by. Good luck!" Again Dick endured the rumbling of trains through long hours, the change from one to another at small junctions, the day and night in a stage coach whose springs seemed to have lost resiliency, and the discourse of two drummers, Hebraic, the chill aloofness of a supercilious mining expert new to the district, and the heated discussions of two drill runners, veterans, off to a new field, and celebrating the journey with a demijohn. The latter were union men, and long after he was tired of their babel they broached a conversation which brought Dick to a point of eager listening. "Yes, you see," one of the men asserted; "they got the goods on him. Thompson had been a good delegate until he got the finger itch, then he had an idea he could use the miners' union to scratch 'em. He held up one or two small mines before the big guns got wise. That got him to feelin' his oats, and he went for bigger game." "But how did they get him?" the other runner insisted.