When Storri had done, Mr. Harley gulped and gasped a bit, and then asked if he might retain the armful of papers for further consideration. He would like to go over them carefully; particularly those Canadian reports and assurances that related to the canal. "My dear, good friend," cried Storri, with a magnificent wave of the hand, "you may do what you will!" There are men, reckoned shrewd in business, whose shrewdness can be overcome by ciphers. It is as though they were wise up to seven figures. Mr. Harley was of these; he had his boundaries. His instincts were solvent, his policies sound, his suspicions full of life and courage, so that you went no higher than nine millions. Burdened beyond that, his imagination would break down; and since his instincts, his policies, and his suspicions rested wholly upon his imagination, when the latter fell the others must of need go with it. There is a depth to money just as there is to a lake; when you led Mr. Harley in beyond the nine-million-dollar mark he began to drown. When Storri--Pelion upon Ossa--piled steamship on railway, and canal on steamship, and banking and lumber and mining and twenty other companies on top of these, Mr. Harley was dazed and benumbed. When Storri concluded and capped all with his Credit Magellan, capital thirty billions, it was, so far as Mr. Harley is to be considered, like taking a child to sea. In the haze and the blur of it, Mr. Harley could see nothing, say nothing; his impulse was to be alone and collect himself. He felt as might one who has been staring at the sun. Storri's picture of an enterprise so vast that it proposed to set out the world like a mighty pan of milk, and skim the cream from two hemispheres, dazzled him and caused his wits to lose their way. At the end of three days Mr. Harley had begun to get his bearings; he was still fascinated, but the fog was lifting. Step by step he went over Storri's grand proposals; and, while he had now his eyes, each step seemed only to take him more deeply into a wilderness of admiration. That very admiration filled him with a sense of dull alarm. He resolved to have other counsel than his own. Were he and Storri to embark upon this world-girdling enterprise, they must have money-help. He would take the project to certain money-loving souls; he would get their opinions by asking their aid.