The period expired in a wondering exhalation. Veneada pounded on his friend's chest, dug into his arm. “A horse!” he declared. Alexander Hulings impatiently withdrew from the other's touch. “Veneada,” he said, “once you asked me to come to you if I wanted money, if I happened on a good thing. I said nothing at the time, because I couldn't picture an occasion when I'd do such a thing. Well—it's come. I need money, and I'm asking you for it. And, I warn you, it will be a big sum. If you can't manage it, I must go somewhere else; I'd go to China, if necessary—I'd stop people, strangers, on the street. “A big sum,” Hulings reiterated somberly; “perhaps ten, perhaps twenty, thousand. Not a loan,” he added immediately, “but an investment—an investment in me. You must come out to Harmony. I can't explain: it wouldn't sound convincing in Eastlake. In the valleys, at Tubal Cain, the thing will be self-evident. I have made a beginning with practically nothing; and I can go on. But it will require capital, miles of forest, furnaces built, Pittsburgh swept bare of good men. No,” he held up a hardened, arresting palm, “don't attempt to discuss it now. Come out to Tubal Cain and see; learn about John Wooddrop and how to turn iron into specie.” At the end of the week there were three chairs canted against the stone wall of the little house by the stream that drove Tubal Cain Forge. Conrad Wishon, with a scarlet undershirt open on a broad, hairy chest, listened with wonderment to the sharp periods of Alexander Hulings and Veneada; incredulously he heard mammoth sums of money estimated, projected, dismissed as commonplace. Veneada said: “I've always believed in your ability, Alex; all that I questioned was the opportunity. Now that has gone; the chance is here. You've got those steel-wire fingers of yours about something rich, and you will never let go. It sounds absurd to go up against this Wooddrop, a despot and a firmly established power; anyone might well laugh at me, but I feel a little sorry for the older man. He doesn't know you. “You haven't got insides, sympathies, weaknesses, like the others of us; the thing is missing in you that ordinarily betrays human men into slips; yes—compassion. You are not pretty to think about, Alex; but I suppose power never really is. You know I've got money and you know, too, that you can have it. As safe with you as in a bank vault!” “We'll go back to Eastlake tomorrow,” Hulings decided, “lay out our plans, and draw up papers. We'll buy the loose timber quietly through agents; I'll never appear in any of it. After that we can let out the contracts for two furnaces. I don't know anything about them now; but I shall in a week. Wishon had better live on here, pottering about the forge, until he can be sent to Pittsburgh after workmen. His pay will start tomorrow.” “What about Tubal Cain, and that fellow—what's his name?”