"You will?--you'll do that for me, Griswold?" he said, with a queer stridency in his voice that made the word-craftsman, always on the watch for apt similes, think of a choked chicken. But Raymer was swallowing hard and trying to go on. "By Jove--it's the most generous thing I ever heard of!--but I can't let you do it. I haven't a thing in the world to offer you but the stock, and that may not be worth the paper it is printed on if Jasper Grierson has made up his mind to break me." "Sit down again and let us thresh it out," said Griswold. "How much of a Socialist are you, Raymer?" The young ironmaster sat down, gasping a little at the sudden wrenching aside of the subject. "Why, I don't know; enough to want every man to have a square deal, I guess." "Including the men in your shops?" "Putting them first," was the prompt correction. "It was my father's policy, and it has been mine. We have never had any labor troubles." "You pay fair wages?" "We do better than that. A year ago, I introduced a modified plan of profit-sharing." Griswold's eyes were lighting up with the altruistic fires. "Once in awhile, Raymer, a thing happens so fortuitously as to fairly compel a belief in the higher powers that our fathers included in the word 'Providence'," he said, almost solemnly. "You have described exactly an industrial situation which seems to me to offer a solution of the whole vexed question of master and man, and to be a seed-sowing which is bound to be followed by an abundant and most humanizing harvest. Ever since I began to study, even in a haphazard way, the social system under which we sweat and groan, I've wanted in on a job like yours. I still want in. Will you take me as a silent partner, Raymer? I'm not making it a condition, mind you: come here any time after ten o'clock to-morrow, and you'll find the money waiting for you. But I do hope you won't turn me down." Raymer was gripping the arms of his chair again, but this time they were not unpleasantly electrified. "If I had only myself to consider, I shouldn't keep you waiting a second," he returned, heartily. "But it may take a little time to persuade my mother and sister. If they could only know you"--then, forgetting the crossed wire and his late overhearings--"why can't you come out to dinner with me to-night?" "For the only reason that would make me refuse; I have a previous bidding. But I'll be glad to go some other day. There is no hurry about this business matter; take all the time you need--after you have made Mr. Grierson take his claws out of you." Raymer had filled the borrowed pipe again and was pulling at it reflectively. "About this partnership; what would be your notion?" he asked. "The simplest way is always the best. Increase your capital stock and let me in for as much as my ninety thousand dollars will buy," said the easily satisfied investor. "We'll let it go at that until you've had time to think it over, and talk it over with your mother and sister."