There was no physical reason why that branch should not have been made into an interurban electric railroad a dozen years ago--the road that owned it has never found it difficult to sell bonds for the improvement of its property. Though no one paid particular attention to it at headquarters, a roving young engineer with a genius for making money, looked at it enviously--at the dozen prosperous towns it aimed to serve. A fortnight's visit to the locality convinced him. He went down to a big city where capital was just hungry to be invested profitably and organized an electric railroad to thread each of those towns. Before the headquarters of the steam road was really awake to the situation cars were running on its electric competitor. And the people of the dozen towns seemed to enjoy riding in the electric cars mightily--they were big and fast and clean. The steam road made a brave show of maintaining its service. It hauled long strings of empty coaches rather than surrender its pride; but such pride was almost as empty as the coaches. Sooner or later any business organization must swallow false pride; and so it came to pass that an emissary of the steam road met the roving young engineer and asked him to put a price on his property. He smiled, totaled his construction and equipment costs, added a quarter of a million dollars to the total, and tossed the figures across the table. The emissary did not smile. He reported to his headquarters and the steam railroad began to fight--it was going to starve out the resources of its trolley competitor by cutting passenger rates to a cent a mile. When the trolley company met that, the railroad would cut the rate in two again--it could afford to pay people to ride on its cars rather than suffer defeat; but they would not ride on its cars, even at a lower rate. And once again the steam road's emissary went up the branch. He sought out the trolley engineer. The trolley man was indifferent. "Well," said the steam-road man, "we're seeing you." And at that he threw down a certified check for the exact amount that had been agreed upon at their previous conference. The trolley man did not touch the paper. He smiled what lady novelists are sometimes pleased to call an inscrutable smile, then shook his head slowly. "What!" gasped the emissary from the steam road. "Wasn't that your figure?" "It was--but isn't now!" said the engineer. "It's up a quarter of a million now." "Why?"