"Oh, so so," replied the man from Maine. "There ain't been much change up there since you was there. That is, not what you'd really call a change. How's things with you? The company still pays dividends, I see." Mr. Howell was the owner of four shares of the company's stock. "Doing all right," Smith responded. "The Guardian believes in making haste slowly, you know; we don't go ahead very fast, but we keep plugging along. Mr. Wintermuth feels it's always best to be on the safe side. Occasionally it's discouraging when we see some competitor build up an income in three or four years as big as ours that it's taken three or four generations to establish, but when we read some morning that our enterprising friends have had to reinsure their liability with some stronger concern and retire from business because their losses have caught up to them, we don't feel quite so badly. Personally I think we could travel a little faster, and I'd like to see our premiums twice what they are now. And I hope you'll double them this year in Schuyler, anyway." "Maybe so, but you never can tell. Business is liable to slack up just when you think it's going along all right. And there ain't been any new building in Schuyler of any account for two years back but Dodge's feed mill and the new Union School. You've got a line on both of them." At this point their conversation was interrupted because of the departure of the persistent gentleman, who had been closeted with Mr. Wintermuth. As the door closed on him, Jimmy disappeared around the corner and thrust his head and fore quarters, so to speak, into O'Connor's open doorway. "Th' President's at liberty now," he announced. Without replying, the Vice-President picked up the _Journal of Commerce_ and the daily report with the yellow telegram affixed to it, and strode over, past Smith's desk, to the office of his chief. "Can you come out and look at the map a minute, sir?" he asked respectfully. "Certainly. What is it? A loss?" replied Mr. Wintermuth, noticing the telegraph slip as he rose from his chair and followed O'Connor toward the map counter. "Yes," said the Vice-president. He was passing the desk of the General Agent, and he took care that his remark might be overheard. "And it looks to me like something we ought not to have had." "What's that?" rejoined the older man, quickly. "We're not accepting business that we shouldn't write, are we? What is it? And who passed it?" "Smith seems to have approved the line," O'Connor said slowly. "Herbert, I thought I told you to leave that Providence map out for me." "It's right there, sir," said the map clerk; "right where you left it, sir." "Here's the risk," said the Vice-president, pointing it out to his superior with every sign of decent regret. "It seems to be a mattress factory, a class we never write. . . . Smith appears to have passed it--there's his initial. Of course, he may have had some special reason for--"