interposed a purely personal obstacle.

"I couldn't serve as your engineer, Mr. Cortwright, not even in a consulting capacity. Call it prejudice or anything you please, but I simply couldn't do business in an associate relation with your man Hosford."

Cortwright had risen, and he took his guest confidentially by the buttonhole.

"Do you know, Brouillard, Hosford gets on my nerves, too? Don't let that influence you. We'll let Hosford go. We needed him at first to sort of knock things into shape; it takes a man of his calibre in the early stages of a project like ours, you know. But he has outlived his usefulness and we'll drop him. Let's go up-stairs."

It was quite late in the evening when Brouillard, a little light-headed from an after-dinner hour of purely social wit-matching with Miss Genevieve, passed out through the café of the Metropole on his way to his quarters.

There were a few late diners at the tables, and Bongras, smug and complacent in evening regalia, was waddling about among them like a glorified head waiter, his stiffly roached hair and Napoleonic mustaches striving for a dignity and fierceness which was cruelly negatived by a round, full-fed face and an obese little body.

"Ze dinnare—she was h-all right, M'sieu' Brouillard?" he inquired, holding the engineer for a moment at the street door.

"As right as the price you're going to charge Mr. Cortwright for it," joked Brouillard.

"Sacré!" swore the amiable one, spreading his hands, "if you could h-only know 'ow eet is cost to bring dose dinnare on dis place! Two dollare de 'undred pounds dat mule-freightare is charge me for bringing dose chip-pest wine from Quesado! Sommtime ve get de railroad, n'est-ce pas, M'sieu' Brouillard? Den ve make dose dinnare moz risson-able."

"Yes, you will!" Brouillard scoffed jocosely. "You'll be adding something then for the uniqueness—for the benefit of the tourists. It'll be a great ad, 'The Hotel Metropole, the Delmonico's of the Lake Bottom. Sit in and dine with us before the heavens open and the floods come.'"

"I'll been wanting to h-ask you," whispered the Frenchman with a quick-flung glance for the diners at the nearest of the tables, "doze flood—when she is coming, M'sieu' Brouillard?"

"When we get the dam completed."

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