junior partner looked around at the clerks, who hastily resumed their interrupted duties.

"Come in here," he said to the visitor, and he led his guest into an inner office next to Mr. Osgood's own, and closed the door behind him.

"I did have an idea," he conceded, as he motioned Wilkinson to a seat, "and it was an idea that had several things to recommend it. But it was a business proposition, and if you will pardon my saying so, Charlie, you are not the kind of a collaborator I would choose, if I were doing the choosing."

"But you're not, my boy," replied the other, unabashed. "I'm doing the choosing, myself, and I choose you. Your idea was palpably based on separating my barnacled connection from some of the ghastly pile of glittering gold that he has taken, five cents at a time, from the widows, orphans, blind, halt, and lame who patronize his trolley lines. Elucidate forthwith, Benny—in the vernacular, unbelt. I am listening."

Cole was reflecting. No one knew better than he how little regard John M. Hurd really felt for this mercurial youth. Yet Mr. Hurd had resisted with entire success all other means of approach. After all, family connections counted for something, even with the retentive old trolley magnate. So when at last he spoke, it was with the determination to show a part of his hand, at least, to Wilkinson.

"Mr. Hurd is President of the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction
Company," he began.

His visitor smiled affably.

"There is a popular impression to that effect," he admitted.

"Silas Osgood and Company and—" he paused a moment—"Bennington Cole
are in the fire insurance business. The Massachusetts Light, Heat, and
Traction Company carries no fire insurance on any of its properties.
Well," he said sharply, "do you begin to see how you come into this?"

"See what?" asked Wilkinson, blankly.

"The insurable value of the various properties of the company must amount to six or eight million dollars. The average rate on those properties would probably be about seventy-five cents per hundred dollars a year for insurance. That would make a premium of say fifty thousand dollars per annum. The commission to the insurance broker who handled that line—who could secure it and control it—would be ten per cent of fifty thousand, or five thousand dollars. Half that amount—I am doing these sums for you so that you can catch the idea—would be twenty-five hundred—without any risk to yourself and every year of your life. Do you think the game worth a try?"

Wilkinson sat up with eager interest.

"Why half? Why not both halves?" he inquired.

The other man spread his hands before him in a gesture as well recognized among elder peoples as it is to-day.

"Naturally I would expect half for originating the scheme, drawing up the schedule in its proper form, securing the lowest rate, and placing the line with the various companies. You couldn't do those things, you know; it takes knowledge of the business."

His visitor once more sat back in his chair.

"And all I have to do is to get Uncle John to take out an insurance policy on his trolley cars! A mere nothing! I'm astonished that you offer me so much as half—for so simple an office. Really, Benny, you are losing your faculties. I can almost see them evaporating. Yes, the time will come when some one of our mutual friends, driving past the Meadow Creek Paresis Club, where Dr. McMullen receives certain amiable but not entirely responsible persons, will behold you hanging cheerily by one hand from the pergola roof with a vacuous smile on your twitching lips, and will say to me sadly: 'Charlie, you knew him, didn't you, in the old days, when his mind was as keen and bright as an editor's knife?' And with chastened melancholy I will respond: 'Yes, George, it is true. And moreover I was with him on the day when his mind commenced to give way. The day he offered me a full half of the spoils of my own—what do you call it?—oh, yes, arbalest.'"

Cole laughed, and not altogether pleasantly.

"Well, if you can get John M. to carry insurance, I'll see that you are not disappointed in the terms of our agreement."

"Do you know, Benny, somehow I'd rather have it in writing. Suppose we say one third to you and two thirds to me. After all, I need the money, you see, and you don't."

"Aren't we counting our chickens a good while before they have emerged from the incubator?" the other suggested.

"Very likely," Wilkinson readily agreed. "But I find that if I ever indulge in that diverting form of mathematics it has to be before the hatching. The little yellow rascals never stay around long enough afterward to permit themselves to be counted."

Bennington Cole slowly picked up a pen and drew toward him a sheet of paper; more slowly still he wrote what he described as a gentleman's agreement between Charles Wilkinson and himself. That young man sat back and studied the face of his associate with shrewd, half-shut eyes. Presently Cole stopped writing.

"I fancy this will serve," he said.

"Read the Machiavellian document," demanded Wilkinson, placidly. And
Cole read.

"'Agreement between Bennington Cole and Charles Wilkinson. Said Bennington Cole agrees that if said Charles Wilkinson shall secure control of the fire insurance of the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company, said Bennington Cole shall handle such account to the best of his ability and shall pay to said Charles Wilkinson two thirds of all brokerage commissions received thereby.'"

Said Charles Wilkinson reached for the paper.

"It seems to be in order," he said presently. "Sign it and date it, Benny, and bring in old Stewpan there to witness it. This is a business proposition, and I know how such things ought to be handled."

It was duly signed and duly witnessed by the aged and anemic cashier of the Osgood office, and Mr. Wilkinson placed it carefully in his pocketbook. Then he rose with alacrity.

"I'm sure you'll pardon my insistence on this little technicality," he said smoothly; "but you business men, you professional men, are so shrewd, so very alert and quick of mind, that a comparative novice like myself is mere wax in your strong, deft fingers. . . . And now to cipher out some way to secure the golden apple which hangs so close to hand, yet so very dragon-guarded."

"That's your work," rejoined Cole. "I won't attempt to offer suggestions. Nearly every insurance broker in Boston has at one time or another had a go at John M. Hurd. Boring him to death has been unsuccessfully tried several times, but as you are in the family, you may of course have superior facilities to any of your predecessors. Blackmail might accomplish something. But really I can't help you any, Charlie. If I had any plan, I'd deserve to hang from your friend's pergola roof for giving it to you instead of using it myself. I guess this is where you begin to do a little hard thinking."

"What marvelous incisiveness you possess, Benny," his friend commented. "It is an uplift to hear you. But you see thinking is quite in my line. Any one who has had to think as hard as I how to keep the lean white wolf of the Green Mountains—or vice versa—from my shifting doorstep, certainly need not tremble before the necessity of thought. But I have learned this—when I want to get something I don't know how to get, I invariably regard it the height of sapience to go and ask some one who does know how. In this case I can ask without going, for