for the next six months!"

"Why do it?" demanded Rohscheimer, not unreasonably. "Why feed 'em up on idleness?"

"Their idleness may be compulsory," replied Sheard. "Few would employ a starving man while a well-nourished one was available."

"Cut the Socialist twaddle!" directed the other coarsely. "It gets on my nerves! You and your cheques! Who'd you make 'em payable to? Editor of the Gleaner."

"I would suggest," said Sir Richard Haredale, smiling, "to Séverac Bablon."

"To who?" inquired Rohscheimer, with greater interest than grammar.

"Séverac Bablon," said Sheard, informatively, "the man who gave a hundred dollars to each of the hands discharged from the Runek Mill, somewhere in Ontario. That's whom you mean, isn't it, Haredale?"

"Yes," assented the latter. "I was reading about it to-day."

"We had it in this morning," continued Sheard. "Two thousand men."

"Eh?" grunted Rohscheimer hoarsely.

"Two thousand men," repeated Sheard. "Each of them received notes to the value of a hundred dollars on the morning after the mill closed down, and a card, 'With the compliments of Séverac Bablon.'"

"Forty thousand pounds!" shouted the millionaire. "I don't believe it!"

"It's confirmed by Reuter to-night."

"Then the man's a madman!" pronounced Rohscheimer conclusively.

"Pity he doesn't have a cut at London!" came Denby's voice.

"Is it?" growled the previous speaker. "Don't you believe it! A maniac like that would mean ruination for business if he was allowed to get away with it!"

"Ah, well!" yawned Sheard, standing up and glancing at his watch, "you may be right. Anyway, I've got a report to put in. I'm off!"

"Me, too!" said the financier thickly. "Come on, Haredale. We're overdue at Park Lane! It's time we were on view in Park Lane, Adeler!"

The tide of our narrative setting in that direction, it will be well if we, too, look in at the Rohscheimer establishment. We shall 

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