“What’s all this leading up to? What change have you been making, Cater?” asked Justin, with stern abruptness. “I’ve given the agency of the machine to Hardanger.” “Hardanger!” Justin’s face flushed momentarily, then became set and expressionless. To stand out on abstract questions of honor, and then tacitly break all faith by going in with Hardanger! “I shut down on part of my plant when I began figuring on this change,” continued Cater. “I’ve been getting the steel fittin’s on contract from Benschoten again, as I did at first; it’ll come cheaper in the end. Gives us a pretty big stock to start off with. I was sorry—I was sorry to have to turn off a dozen men, but what you going to do? I’ve got to cut down on the manufacturing as close as I can now.” “I suppose so.” “I wanted to tell you the first one,” said Cater. “Well, I congratulate you,” said Justin formally, rising. “This isn’t going to make any difference in the friendship between me and you, Mr. Alexander? I’ve thought a powerful lot of your friendship. If I’d ’a’ seen any way to have come in with you, I’d ’a’ done it. But business ain’t going to interfere between two such good friends as we are!” “Why, no,” said Justin, with the conventional answer to an appeal which still pitifully claims for truth that which it has made false. The handshake that followed was one in which all their friendship seemed to dissolve and change its character, hardening into ice. _Hardanger!_ Hardanger & Co. represented one of the greatest factors in the trade of two hemispheres. To say that a thing was taken up by Hardanger & Co. meant its success—they took nothing that was not likely to succeed; they _made_ it succeed—for them. Their agents in all parts of the known world had easy access to firms and to opportunities hard to be reached by those of lesser credit. Their reputation was unassailed; they kept scrupulously to the terms agreed upon. The only bar to putting an article into their hands was the fact that their terms—except in the case of certain standard articles which they were obliged to have—embraced nearly all the profits, only the very narrowest margins coming to the original owners. Everything had to be figured down, and still further and further down, by those owners, to make that margin possible. It was cut-throat all the way through—a policy that made for the rottenness of trade.